Look Through My Eyes
by Scribbler
Summary: Speedy goes missing. He's eventually recovered, having been tortured by Cheshire for three days and nights. Bumblebee, Aqualad , Mas y Menos and the other Titans must now help him heal, while at the same time reconciling themselves to what has happened.
1. All You'll See is Darkness

**Disclaimer Haiku: **

Teen Titans are not

Mine. Speedy is actually

Fine. He is _so_ fine.

**A/N:** This is the little fic that could, meaning it started off as a one-shot and turned into substantially more. Technically I'd like to have posted it as a one-shot still, but it really is too long for that. So it's being uploaded as a multi-chapter, but I'd like all readers to keep in mind that it wasn't originally written that way. Don't worry about the jumpy timeline. This is a story told partly in flashbacks. Just give it a chance to make sense and it will, I promise.

Additionally, though I've written this to fit in right after the end of Teen Titans canon, it was partially inspired by something that happened in _The Ties That Bind_, a future-fic I wrote for JLU (because that fic wasn't angsty _enough_). Familiarity with that fic is not necessary for this one though.

* * *

_**Look Through My Eyes**_

_© Scribbler, September-December 2007._

* * *

_There will be times on this journey when  
All you'll see is darkness;  
But out there somewhere  
Daylight finds you  
If you keep believing.  
So don't run,  
Don't hide,  
It will be all right.  
You'll see,  
Trust me,  
I'll be there watching over you._

Just take a look through my eyes,  
There's a better place somewhere out there.  
Just take a look through my eyes.  
Everything changes;  
You'll be amazed what you'll find  
If you look through my eyes.

-- from _Look Through My Eyes_ by Phil Collins.

* * *

**1. ****All You'll See is Darkness**

* * *

He felt like he'd tried to tackle a tree – a very large tree with an extensive root system, all covered in fragments of broken glass. Sharp pain zinged around his body, but after the first few agonising seconds the pointed edges blurred together to become a mass of dull throbbing. That didn't stop his left wrist becoming molten with pain when someone knocked into him, jarring him as they swung a punch (a fight? Here? Now?) at someone else.

Then things went quiet, but he couldn't see … anything.

Why? Why couldn't he see? He felt suddenly helpless that there were people in the room _and he couldn't see who they were_. He could feel their presence, heard them panting, but … who was there? Friend or enemy? He wasn't sure which he'd prefer right now.

He might've made some noise, because they stopped and talked over his head like he wasn't even freaking _there_.

And that sense of not-there-ness was even worse than the helplessness.

* * *

_The girl was slender as a candle flame, with an elusive, glancing beauty. She looked soft and vulnerable, her clothes too big and her hair too long, dwarfing her face with its big watery eyes. She cowered when he came near, hunching up against the wall with her knees to her chest, even though the mugger was gone._

_She had no purse._

_It was the only clue she wasn't what she seemed, and he missed it._

"_You okay?"_

_She nodded mutely. _

"_Did they hurt you?"_

_She shook her head. Her mouth turned up in a smile and she held out a hand to him. He took it as a sign of trust and reached to help her up. _

_That was when she leaped to her feet, impossibly fast, and jabbed the needle she'd been hiding into his neck. He pushed her away, but already his knees were weak and his vision cloudy. His fingers fumbled so he couldn't snap open his communicator._

_He saw her smile turn hard as he crashed to the ground._

* * *

Bumblebee went from disbelief to total fury in three seconds.

When Cheshire was subdued and they flipped on the light she was ready to rip the bitch's heart out with her bare hands. Only the naked horror on Mas and Menos's faces restrained her.

"¿Él se recuperará?" She knew it was bad. Mas spoke tremulously. Neither he nor his brother did tremulous. They were livewire bundles of hyperactivity, brimming with enough reckless bravery they'd been key in bringing down the Brain. They were _el major_ - the best of the best of the best.

_His hand._

"He'll be fine, guys, but we need to get the emergency services up here," said Aqualad.

_His __**hand**_

"Uh, Bumblebee?"

Beast Boy's voice snapped her back to reality. "What? Oh, sure. Yeah. We gotta do some triage."

She looked at Cheshire, cuffed and unconscious on the floor. It'd taken all of them to bring her down. A set of knives were jammed into the plaster on the far wall, and blood dribbled down Aqualad's leg from a wound in his thigh. Cheshire had been aiming for his femoral artery. Only by ripping out the faucet and pinning her against the ceiling with all the water from the pipes had he managed to save himself.

"And take care of _that_," Bumblebee added.

Aqualad nodded. "I'll do it." He knew her too well. She was a good leader, a good Titan, but she couldn't predict what she might do if left alone with that bitch right now…

Speedy groaned.

_Ohmygodhishand._

"Get those paramedics up here – now!"

* * *

"_He's been gone too long and he hasn't made radio contact in over three hours."_

_She brushed Aqualad away, leafing through the pages of a police report she'd discovered while cleaning up last week's pizza boxes, which was supposed to be filed last Thursday. It was for the murder of a museum security guard, still unsolved, and stained with grease and tomato sauce. Police Chief Wolfman lurved his paperwork and was going to have her wings as a trophy for this._

"_I'm not kidding, Bumblebee. This feels wrong to me."_

"_Speedy never follows the rules. He's probably bumming dinner from that diner with the waitress who likes him. You know, the one with the big bazoomas. She always sneaks him a free hamburger. He'll be back soon."_

"_I don't know…" Aqualad glanced out the Tower's huge main window, as though scanning for the only teammate left to return from patrol. Up here, all they could see was the concrete decking of the helipad and open ocean. If Speedy was patrolling __**that**__, his sense of direction was worse than she'd thought. "I have a bad feeling about this."_

_Bumblebee sighed and glanced over the top of her report. "It's probably just gas from that lentil stew. He'll be back."_

_Three days later she cursed herself for a fool._

* * *

Speedy resurfaced and blinked. Automatically aware his mask was missing, he tried to reach for his face but found his arms stuck full of wires and tubes. Nearby, a faint bleeping picked up speed. He breathed in the acrid scent of antiseptic.

A hospital.

Or … some kind of medical facility, at least. He once spent some time in an army Medical Corps tent, after he and Ollie chased some lowlife to Lebanon. You couldn't take anything for granted in this game.

He still felt like crap, which was about all he could remember from before he conked out. When he moved, bandages pressed against his skin. More tubes poked out from under them, making him feel like something from a bad anime about test subjects who run amok to wipe out humanity. Or perhaps an extra in ER. Yeah. Maybe with that pretty Indian nurse soothing his brow with a damp washcloth…

_Smoothing sweat-dampened hair from his forehead. Fingers running along his jaw line, smearing the blood from his cut lip like a clown's made-up smile. The smile staring back at him never flickers – not surprising, since it's painted on. He gathers saliva and blood in his mouth to spit at her, but she pinches his cheeks, shakes her head, and drives the knives on her hand deep into his shoulder –_

The memory bullwhipped into his mind, and suddenly everything came flooding back. He wanted to cover his face again, but couldn't, and when he'd nearly yanked out all the wires a bunch of orderlies came to restrain him.

"God damn it, let me through!" a familiar voice cut through the melee.

He smiled. It was about all he _could_ do, since if he thought too hard about anything else he was going to scream out loud or start laughing like he couldn't stop. "Bumblebitch. Better late than never."

"Speedy? Hey, get offa me! That's my teammate in there!"

"Miss, you really do need to leave. We've got this under control."

"The hell you're keeping us out. I'm pissed off, powered up and full of coffee. You do _not_ wanna tell me I can't see him right now."

Same old Bumblebee – mean as a snake and twice as dedicated to her team.

_First through the door when they break it down. First to see him tied to the chair. First to see the strategic rips in his clothing, the blood, to meet on oncoming whip of dark hair and shiny knives…_

First through the orderlies to see him trussed up and helpless like a Thanksgiving turkey.

Suddenly Speedy really wished he was still unconscious.

* * *

"_Bumblebee to Robin, do you read me?"_

"_I read you, Bumblebee."_

"_What've you got for me?"_

"_We haven't found anything yet, but Raven's decided to do a general mind sweep."_

_Bumblebee nodded at the tiny image on her communicator. Raven couldn't pinpoint minds unless she'd been in them before and had a link to follow back to its source. She'd never been in Speedy's head to heal or speak with him. She had been at pains to explain that when Bumblebee cornered her two seconds after the Titans arrived. _

"_It's like a phone connection. I need a wire to trace, and I need to know which wire is which in the huge tangle of all the other minds in the world."_

_Fury effervesced in Bumblebee at the lack of quick fix, so she just dispatched them with the order to alert her and the rest of Titans East the moment they discovered anything – and she meant __**anything**__. Bad enough things had gone so far they had to call in back-up to find one of their own, without being cut out of the loop completely. _

_The image flickered and the screen split to show Cyborg, expression full of concern. "How you holding up, Bee?"_

_She gritted her teeth. "I'm peachy freaking keen. Just tell me if you find him."_

_Three days. Three days since Speedy went missing, and they hadn't found a single trace anywhere, except the bow left on their doorstep the first night and the empty, blood-spattered quiver on the second. Whoever left them had slipped past East Tower security like smoke, not even appearing on the video cameras. Added to that, Speedy's communicator was offline, untraceable and presumably destroyed. It was as if he had vanished off the face of the earth._

_Bumblebee refused to believe he was dead. It was too much a condemnation of her own mistakes. _

_Beast Boy changed back from his bloodhound shape and looked at her. "These things smell of yeast." He nodded at the quiver and bow. _

"_What?"_

"_And flour and eggs. Is there a bread factory anywhere in Steel City?"_

"_No. Pretty much everything's brought in from the outside. The only things Steel makes are armaments, chemicals and illegal mutants. That's why it's known as America's Cesspit."_

_He reverted to bloodhound, sniffed the items, and turned back again. "How about a bakery? Are there many of those in Steel?"_

"_The health inspectors left a couple open. Should we check them out?" She didn't have any better ideas, after combing the city and surrounding ocean before the Titans got there. The police hadn't had any luck, either – not from cops on the street, nor from those pressing criminals already custody with known grudges against the Titans._

"_Uh, sure," Beast Boy said, evidently surprised she was heeding him and his nose. "I also smelled motor oil, so a bakery near a garage or car lot might be a good place to start."_

_Carla's Cakes, on 25__th__, next to Honest Moe's Used Cars and Mechanics. Titans East fought a magnetic monster there last April. Mas nearly got squashed by a flying Buick until Speedy tackled him to safety, and people said the fireball could be seen all the way from nearby Calico City._

"_Titans, move it!"_

* * *

"So … I hear they do wonderful things with prosthetics these days."

A lump caught in her throat. She couldn't talk, which was a first for her. She always had plenty to say; loudly, proudly, whether you wanted her to or not.

Speedy wasn't looking at them. He talked like this was normal; like they were talking about the weather, or what to have for lunch. The weather was sunny – day dawned hours ago and the breeze was sharp and acrid as ever. Lunch would probably be more sandwiches from the hospital kitchen, or candy bars and soda from a vending machine.

"Really impressive things," Speedy continued. "You'd hardly know it was fake. And since I'm a ward of the Queen estate, I have the kind of health insurance that gets you jumped ahead in line and pays for the very best, even though I haven't spoken to that bastard in months-"

"Roy -"

"Don't!" The word snapped like the tip of a bullwhip in her face, making her blink. "Just … don't. It's Speedy. Don't think this is going to slow me down. This?" He waved his left wrist, which ended in an ugly, bandaged stump. "This is nothing. I'll still be able to draw a bow."

She bit her lip. Maybe. Maybe not. Nothing was certain, except that even if he _could_ someday practise archery again it would be a long, painful process to get there. And despite his protests, he'd probably never be Speedy again. You couldn't fight crime with a missing limb and pieces of kneecap floating around inside your leg. You couldn't keep other people safe when you weren't safe to be roaming the mean streets of Steel on your own. Steel chewed people up until they weren't much more than bloodstained gristle.

The doctors said he might need a cane. A _cane_.

They all agreed Speedy was the lightest on his feet. He had to be. With no aquakinesis, no superspeed, no flight, starbolts, hardware or shapeshifting, all that stood between life and death in the field were his arrows and his agility.

A freaking _cane_.

"Raven said she can take care of a lot of it, once she's meditated some and juiced herself up." Speedy nodded, patting his right hand in a staccato rhythm against the bedclothes. "I'll be fine. A little sore, and then there's the obvious." That stump again, waving around, trying to gesture with invisible fingers. "But everything else will be fine. She once healed Robin of everything except a broken wrist when he drove his bike into a concrete pillar. At least I wasn't _that_ dumb."

Robin was also really light on his feet. The idea of him laid up in a hospital bed, or using a cane was ridiculous. He would survive. It should've given them hope. It only kind of did. The worst wounds were the ones you couldn't see, and they were all too aware of that fact.

Speedy's smile was just a little too bright. Though he'd demanded a fresh mask, his gaze was also too intense, too jovial to be real. He could be cheerful, sure, but not for long periods. His default state was arrogant asshole spiced with bored teenager.

"They said you refused to speak to the counsellor," Bumblebee started, since nobody else wanted to.

Titans West had retired to their guest rooms in the Tower, leaving Titans East the privacy to tend to their teammate. They knew all about psychological damage, having nursed themselves through plenty. Maybe Robin or Cyborg could give her a few pointers, because she wasn't handling this very well.

Speedy waved her away. "I don't need to talk to anyone who's just going to call me a crackpot for dressing in tights and shooting arrows at criminals."

"That's not what it's for -"

"I'm _fine_, Bumblebitch. A-okay. 100 per cent kosher."

_Except that you were starved and tortured for three days, plus God knows what else she did to you that made the doctors huddle and refuse to discuss it like that. _The lump in Bumblebee's throat was the size of a bowling ball and about as digestible.

"And I'll be even better when the results of those STD tests get back and _prove_ I'm okay." Wave, wave, wave – she felt sick and clamped her teeth on her tongue. "Again, apart from the obvious."

He wasn't okay. He wasn't even close.

And everyone knew it.

* * *

"… _lacerations on the wrists – rope burns I think…"_

"… _paramedics said it looked like he was tied to that chair for a while…"_

"… _massive disfigurement of the left thigh, but somehow the artery is completely intact…"_

"… _I don't think that hand is saveable; it's too badly damaged …"_

"… _get the rest of that damn mask off, it's hanging by a thread and we need to see that gash through to his cheekbone…"_

"… _smashed heel and kneecaps from what looks to be blunt force trauma…"_

"… _no history, so a low probability of post-trauma epilepsy, but just to make sure…"_

"… _severe dehydration…"_

"… _extensive musculo-skeletal injuries…"_

"… _urine and blood samples to the lab for analysis…"_

"… _only a kid…"_

"… _poor boy …"_

_Bumblebee didn't cry. She wouldn't let herself cry because she didn't deserve to. She'd ignored Aqualad's bad feeling, and look where it'd gotten them. She wasn't fit to be leader._

_**Please don't let him die … **__she prayed to something she wasn't even sure existed – and if even it did she didn't know if she believed in Him. __**He held on for three days waiting for us to come rescue him. Three whole days with that nutjob, and he came through it. It has to count for something. You can't punish him for that. Please don't let him die now-**_

"_Bumblebee?" _

_She turned to find Robin, Starfire, Raven and Cyborg in the waiting room. Each wore a different expression; Robin's darker than the night sky outside. Around them clung a feeling of apprehension, even though Beast Boy had no doubt filled them in on what was happening before they arrived. More likely they were apprehensive of __**her**__ reaction, and that of the rest of Titans East._

_Aqualad was holding things together, though Mas y Menos looked in shock. They'd never seen something that bad before. She tried to keep them away from the nasty stuff – the murders and gang wars and basic human-human viciousness._ _Give them a big pink monster and they could play hero. Give them a case of spousal abuse and they had to grow up. They were only ten. _

_Speedy was only sixteen…_

"_He's in surgery," she said. "They couldn't wait."_

_Raven nodded. "I understand. I'll go have a word with the surgeons' team to see how I can help." She vanished in a swirl of purple shadow. _

"_I …" Starfire stepped forward because she was The Compassionate One and her alienness gave her leave to get things cutely wrong while everyone else figured out what to say. "I … believe apologies are usually given at this point."_

"_Say what?"_

"_I … am sorry this has happened?"_

_The bottom dropped out of Bumblebee's stomach. She looked away, unable to meet anyone's eyes. "Me too," she muttered. _

* * *

Green Arrow didn't come. Speedy ordered them not to call him, was fiercely compelling about it, but if it'd been Batman _he_ would've found out anyway. He would've used his freaky connections and come regardless. After Slade took Robin as his apprentice, Batman went to Jump on the pretence he was also looking for that madman, but everyone knew he really just wanted to make sure his ex-sidekick was okay.

But Green Arrow wasn't Batman, and Green Arrow didn't come to Steel City.

* * *

_She put on the knives with brisk efficiency, like a chef in a swanky Paris restaurant. When she cut him, it was with clean strokes, not botched slashes that bled more than they hurt. She was an expert in causing pain while keeping her victim alive and conscious, so as to best experience it. What was the point in inventing new definitions for 'agony' when he was too unconscious to appreciate them?_

"_Why the hell are you doing this?" Speedy demanded. "Did someone pay you to make me talk? Am I supposed to rat on the Titans defences, or give you the new communicator codes? Because you can forget it."_

_She didn't answer. _

_When he awoke in this stinky little apartment, she was wearing the green robes and cat mask. The frail mugging victim was long gone – along with a lot of his self-respect at falling for her ruse. Although, in his defence, he hadn't expected to be kidnapped by Cheshire when he punched his alarm clock this morning. _

"_How are you even here? You should be in deep freeze somewhere, under government security."_

_She grabbed his face in the hand without knives, squeezing his cheeks together. For a moment the painted eyes stared blankly into his, until she pressed the bottom of her mask against his mouth in some weird parody of a kiss._

_Then she thrust his own arrow through the back of his hand, between the tendons and bones, pinning it to the chair._

* * *

"Damn it!"

Bumblebee entered to find Speedy trying to walk, clutching the rail around his bed as his legs buckled. She buzzed to his side in a flash, propping him up so he didn't fall and smack his head on the floor.

"Get off me, Bumblebitch!" He rudely shoved her away.

Okay, so he didn't fall and smack his _big fat _head on the floor.

"You shouldn't be trying this so soon. The doctors said -"

"Screw the doctors."

"Your injuries were too severe, even with Raven's help. You need to give yourself time to heal -"

"I don't need time to heal."

"Speedy, don't be an idiot." She tugged his elbow, steering him back to the bed.

"Get. Off," he bit out.

"You're pushing yourself too hard. You need to -"

"I'm just trying to get to the freaking bathroom!" He glared at her with unrestrained disgust. "Is that okay, or do I need your _permission _to pee?"

She dropped his arm, flummoxed. "Uh…"

"Jeez." He pushed past and hobbled to the little side door that led to his private bathroom. His legs trembled, and she wanted to help him, but something about the way his spine stayed ramrod straight made her stop.

She could see strips of skin through the hospital gown, both too pale and too red, with fading welts where Raven's magic was still taking effect. It'd been too much all at once. Neither his body nor Raven's could cope with that level and potency of magic sustained over a long period. The procedure drained him each time she came back to heal a little more, though he was getting stronger each day. At least he wasn't asleep and drooling this time.

Bumblebee stared around the room while he was gone, taking in the grimly cheerful 'Get Well Soon' cards and vases of flowers. There were at least six, plus all those that had wilted and been thrown away by the nurses. Strictly speaking flowers weren't allowed, since they brought in germs and even the best Steel City medical facility couldn't cope with a superbug outbreak. However, news travelled fast that one of the city's poster boy superheroes was in the hospital and the rules had been bent.

Bumblebee felt out of place, too healthy and useless compared to the doctors, nurses and patients. Including Speedy.

Especially Speedy.

Three weeks and he was still here.

Three weeks and he still refused to talk about exactly what happened.

Three weeks of pressuring authorities, trying to figure out how Cheshire got loose.

Three weeks of trying to understand why – why him? Why had Cheshire come after Speedy? Was it intentional, or would any Titan have sufficed? Could it have been her in this bed, or Aqualad, Mas, or Menos? Why had Cheshire come to Steel City? Why not Jump? Why _here_, why _Bumblebee's _team, and why hadn't she _known_ about the breakout before it was too late?

Bumblebee cursed herself for not being able to do more, cursed Cheshire for causing this, and cursed Speedy for what'd happened to him. It was ridiculous, and she knew it hadn't been his fault, any of it, but … but. There was no but. She wanted him to let them help him. She wanted to just make it all go away so they could go back to being the victorious Titans, part of the team who vanquished the Brotherhood of Evil and made the world once again safe for the little guy.

How could they make the world safe for the little guy when they couldn't even keep their own guys safe?

So yeah, she was mad at Speedy, but not _at_ him. It was … complicated.

But then her relationship with him had always been complicated. They were teammates, and would go the mat for each other in a heartbeat – all Titans East would. Some days she thought they were even closer than the original Titans, because the originals didn't have to prove to the world that they weren't just some cheap knock-off. Yet despite gladly jumping in front of bullets, risking their necks and watching each other's backs against the scum of America's Cesspit, she and Speedy still fought like kindergarteners. She was too by-the-book for him and she was too l offhand for her. How could she _not_ get mad at a guy who treated rape victims as gently as newborns, then went home and ogled her own panties in the drier?

He was trying hard to be the same old arrogant, obnoxious, insufferable pretty boy he'd always been.

Bumblebee felt like a small child who'd been given its comfort blanket, only to discover the silky edging had come off.

Her head snapped around as if on a piece of elastic when the door opened, and she kept it there despite the Speedy's glare. Raven had done good work on his face. Only a few thin lines where there should have been scarring.

Well, at least he'd got the pretty boy part right.

* * *

_Mas and Menos made terrible stalkers. Speedy could hear them jabbering behind the concrete pillar, and twice one shoved the other so he staggered into view. Speedy crept up on cat feet and scared the bejeesus out of them, enjoying the way Mas leapt into his brother's arms at the same time Menos tried to jump into his, so that they both ended up in a heap on the floor. _

"_Is there some special reason you two are tailing me?"_

"_E__stamos siendo disimulados!"_

"_E__stamos protegiendo los protectors!__"_

"_Say what?" Speedy scratched his head, and then thought better as it mussed his hair. "Do you two just not speak English, or do you choose not to speak it on purpose?"_

"_G__ozamos el hacer de su trabajo de cerebro duro."_

"_Usted lo dejaría conseguir perezoso si hablamos ingles."_

"_Whatever. Just buzz off, will you? I'm trying to patrol here and you're scaring away all the bad guys."_

"_Comprobamos el lado del oeste de la ciudad."_

"_Todo es reservado."_

"_Todo está agujereando!"_

_He'd heard that word before – you couldn't live with two hyperactive ten year olds without learning that 'el agujerear' meant boring. It usually came before they ransacked his trick arrow supplies, his CD collection, his magazines, or all three. He still wasn't sure which pissed him off more. _

"_If patrol's so boring go back to the Tower. Bumblebitch and Aqualad are on surveillance duty tonight. Either one of them should have plenty of chores for you to do." _

_Their fearless leader and second in command were equal in their ability to find hard work in the most innocent situation. Aqualad liked the satisfaction of making a difference, which had inspired him to battle the ocean's evildoers and clean up the seas before taking his fight to dry land. Bumblebitch … well, she just hated seeing others have fun doing nothing. There was a reason he gave her that nickname. _

_Either way, they'd find something for Mas y Menos to do and get them off Speedy's back for the rest of the evening. _

"_Sigue siendo temprano!" Mas protested, pointing at his watch and the waxing moon. _

_Speedy ground his teeth. He didn't need this. "Go home. Clean your rooms or something. I don't know. Just leave me alone."_

_They went into a huddle. Speedy tried to sneak away, but they zipped in front of him. _

"_Iremos a casa," Menos announced. _

"_Pero le contamos con detrás antes del 'bedtime', hombre joven," Mas wagged a finger at him. _

_He swiped at them with his bow, not intending or expecting to make contact. "Buzz off."_

"_Adios!"_

"_¡le veremos más adelante!"_

"_Yeah, yeah." Speedy didn't bother to watch them leave, instead firing off an arrow so he could slide down to the next building. The rooftop there was lower, but gave a good vantage point for the surrounding streets. _

_Once there it was easy to see the girl being chased into the alley by a guy who would've looked at home under the credit 'Ugly Mugger #3'. _

"_Hero time," Speedy grinned, glad for the entertainment as he swung to the rescue. _

_It'd been too quiet around here since they got back from squashing the Brotherhood. All the bad guys were gone, and the petty crooks too scared to come out of hiding. Speedy hated those who preyed on the weak, but he couldn't help but appreciate that tonight's patrol was more exciting than the usual pickpockets and cats stuck in trees. _

_To Be Continued…_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_**Police Chief Wolfman lurved his paperwork and was going to have her wings as a trophy for this.**_

-- Side-fling to Marv Wolfman, who penned the original New Teen Titans comic on which the cartoon series is based. His Titans book ran from 1980 to 1996, and in it he created characters such as Nightwing (the identity, not the character), Starfire, Raven, Cyborg, Deathstroke (i.e. Slade), Jericho, Trigon, Brother Blood, Terra and Doctor Light. He also created Blade, Black Cat and Bullseye for Marvel Comics, plus his _Crisis on Infinite Earths_ storyline (with Titans artist George Perez) won the 1985 Jack Kirby Award for Best Finite Series, and even in today's cut-throat market is still hailed as one of the best comic series ever written. Not bad for someone who started out as a fanficcer in the 60s.

"_**I have a bad feeling about this."**_

-- A line in practically ever Star Wars film. You know when you hear this line that everything is about to turn to shit.

_**He once spent some time in an army Medical Corps tent, after he and Ollie chased some lowlife to Lebanon. You couldn't take anything for granted in this game.**_

-- As Batman found out in _Death in the Family_, wherein he and his then-Robin Jason Todd took a trip to Lebanon to find Jason's erstwhile-thought-dead mother, only for her to sell him out and watch the Joker beat her own son to death with a crowbar. Take nothing for granted indeed.

_**Perhaps an extra in ER. Yeah. Maybe with that pretty Indian nurse soothing his brow with a damp washcloth…**_

-- That would be Dr. Neela Rasgotra, Speedy; otherwise known as actress Parminder Kaur Nagra.

_**She couldn't talk, which was a first for her. She always had plenty to say; loudly, proudly, whether you wanted her to or not. **_

-- A riff off a similar from Kevin Smith's film _Dogma_.

"_**Hero time," Speedy grinned, glad for the entertainment as he swung to the rescue. **_

-- This bit of dialogue is a side-fling to _Batman: Return of the Joker_, wherein another teen hero got into serious and life-altering trouble after playing hero alone one night.

I'd be lying if I said looking at a lot of fanart didn't help me to come up with the concept and imagery in this fic. Credit in particular for this chapter goes to _gaff1229 . deviantart . com / art / TT - Speedy - in - Trouble - 30732993 _and igadevil . deviantart . com / art / Cheshire - Loves - Speedy - 45206845

* * *


	2. I Can't See Another Way

_Everywhere I turn, I hurt someone;  
But there's nothing I can say to change  
The things I've done.  
Of all the things I hid from you,  
I cannot hide the shame;  
And I pray someone, something will come  
To take away the pain _

There's no way out of this dark place,  
No hope, no future.  
I know I can't be free,  
But I can't see another way;  
I can't face another day. 

-- From _No Way Out_ by Phil Collins.

_

* * *

_

**2. ****I Can't See Another Way**

* * *

Bumblebee was restless a lot.

She didn't notice it until she was already stirring, moving, _doing_ – anything to keep her mind and hands occupied. She filed all the papers in her 'office' (really a spare bedroom with a desk in the corner, plus an eiderdown she sometimes slept under when it was too much trouble to get to her room). She punched the gym's heavy bag so much the sand leaked. She even cleaned the kitchen – yes, even the really nasty gunk in the microwave. There was a lot to be said for doing a simple job well.

She tried to make the others' patrols shorter, and portioned the areas so they stuck to the nicer (well, less awful) parts of town, but they saw what she was up to and refused to let her take on the meanest streets by herself. They knew she was trying to stop what happened to Speedy from happening to them too, but as Aqualad told her, there were always risks in this kind of life. They'd known that when they picked it.

"I'm team leader. That means you gotta do what I say," she protested.

"Unless the order's a dumb one," Aqualad replied, sounding so unlike himself and so _like_ Speedy they were both uncomfortable. "What I mean is-"

"I know what you mean. But you gotta understand – as team leader it's my job to keep y'all safe. It's my responsibility to count you off as you go out, then count you in as you get back."

"And who counts you out and in?"

"Don't get fresh with me, Water Boy. Get your butt where the roster says it should be and patrol our city like it means something."

"The city or the patrolling?"

"I said don't get fresh with me." Her snappishness covered quite well how she couldn't give a straight answer to that, she thought.

Some days she hated Steel for being a stinking, rotten septic tank of a town. She hated the heat vents and smokestacks and broken asphalt. She hated the people, who hid behind twitching curtains and wouldn't _do _anything to help themselves – some even spat and threw things at any Titan who got too close. She especially loathed the dark corners and narrow alleys, where terrible things happened and nobody saw. Steel was dying a slow death when they got there, and sometimes she reckoned they hadn't stopped that at all, just slowed it even more. Some nights, when she dragged herself home to find yet more graffiti on the side of the Tower, or trash washed up through the vents into Aqualad's pool, she expected to hear a loud beep overhead, like a flatlining life-support machine.

And yet … some days Steel could almost be pretty. The park, once grey and withered, now held Little League games every Saturday. Newspapers crowed about falling crime rates and how Average Joe could now go to the store for a quart of milk without hunching behind his wheel like it was a tank. Sometimes he even _walked. _The mayor wanted to present Titans East with the key to the city and a full tickertape parade.

Bumblebee turned him down because Speedy was coming home from New York that day. Some things were more important than rare acknowledgement for a job well done.

* * *

"_Cybernetics?"_

"_I called in some favours at the __Scientific and Technological Advanced Research Laboratories. They owe me. It'd involve a lot of physical therapy, plus some more time in hospital, but so long as he let them write research papers about it, the treatment would be free and come with a full 'warranty'. Plus insurance in the form of yours truly. You don't want to tick off a guy who can bench press a bus, or whose father owns forty-seven per cent of your shares." _

_Bumblebee stared at Cyborg so hard his armour plating should've melted. His proud grin wilted like a houseplant in the desert. _

"_You hate the idea," he said flatly._

_She shook her head. "It ain't my decision to make. But … cybernetics?"_

"_It works. Full integration with neural transmitters. It'd be like he never lost his hand."_

"_Except he did lose his hand." If she could've grabbed the words and shoved them back down her throat, she would. Cyborg had lost far more than just his hand. Reacting to his news with anything less than total glee was a slap in the face to everything he'd achieved since the horrific accident that obliterated his body and nearly killed him. "I mean, he might not want to …"_

"_Bee, it's okay. I understand. It's a big step. It'd involve brain surgery to connect the transmitters, extended bed rest that would set back all the progress he's made since Cheshire … happened. Plus there's the moving-"_

"_Moving?"_

"_The research facility is in New York. He'd have to stay there for a while."_

"_How long is a while?"_

"_That'd depend on how well he takes to the treatment, and how long he takes to get back to full health afterwards. How fast he learns how to use the new hand, that sort of thing."_

_She sighed. It was a lot to take in. Possibilities slithered across her skin, wrapping around her fingers and making them tingle. She pressed her left hand to her temple and rubbed in small circular motions. "You know there's only one person who can decide if it's worth it."_

"_It'd mean he could keep going as Speedy," Cyborg offered, like it would help._

"_Yeah." She didn't meet his eyes, one real and one red diode. "That'd be … good."_

_

* * *

_

"I think you should retire."

"The hell?" Speedy looked up at Bumblebee like she wasn't just mad, but the star pupil at Arkham Academy. He was sweeping up the debris from a punching bag he'd accidentally broken – the third since he started training again.

"You got wax in them ears? I think you should retire."

"_Like_ hell," he retorted, bending to finish sweeping. It was astonishing he was cleaning up his own mess without being told. Just one of the many ways he'd changed since he got home. It was unnerving in the extreme.

"Don't turn your back on me-"

"Leave me alone, Bumblebitch. I didn't work so hard for you to move the goalposts now."

"I'm not moving the goalposts. I'm pulling you outta the game. You're …" How to put it nicely? "You're … not as suited to this work anymore."

"I'm doing fine. I can shoot straight, I can patrol, I can save lives and beat up bad guys."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

Something about the way he looked at her reminded Bumblebee of the little red laser dot that preceded a rifle shooting its target. "What's that supposed to mean?"

She looked at the pulverised punching bag.

"You think I can't control myself," he surmised. "You think that because I had one bad experience I'm going to take it out on every mugger and criminal I catch." He didn't even look up. "Cheshire is _gone_, Bumblebitch. She's locked away in a penitentiary and I'm fully recovered. I'm not going to superimpose her face onto anyone else's, and I'm not going to mess up because I get spooked thinking she's around the corner waiting for me. It's over. It's done. You're the only one acting like that whole thing is still an issue."

_It is. _"Isn't it?"

"No."

_It __**is **_"I don't believe you."

"Will you just shut _up_?" Speedy gripped the broom so tight the handle creaked and shattered, spraying the floor with broken wood. His right glove was stuck full of splinters, but the left stayed clenched in a fist. When he opened it, slowly, sawdust trickled out.

Bumblebee cleared her throat. It felt suddenly scratchy and raw, and her voice came out all gruff, like some old army geezer's. "Like I said."

"You think I'm not good enough anymore. You think I'm," he spat the word, "damaged goods." The venom there reminded her of when she tried to call him Roy in the hospital. It was unconcealed and ugly – just like the hand when he didn't put his gloves on. "Did you find you liked working as a four person team while I was in New York? I suppose I'm just dead weight now, since I weigh so much more than I used to."

"No, I think you're a guy who needs some time out if he's ever gonna admit to himself he ain't fully recovered yet."

"I'm fine. The doctors pronounced me fit for duty. This was just an accident because you're pissing me off, talking about stuff that doesn't need talking about."

"And what about when someone pisses you off in the field, Roy?"

"I told you before not to call me-"

"Why not? You're sure as hell not acting like Speedy."

The eyes of his mask narrowed. "Who are you to say how Speedy should act?"

She met the blank white slits without blinking. It was the only way these days – you couldn't lose your nerve or look away, or whatever you wanted to say might _never_ get said. Everything felt like such a test now. "You've never talked to anyone about what happened-"

"Fuck off." He threw the shards of wood to the floor and stormed out of the gym. He couldn't slam the door behind him because all the Tower doors were sliding, but she knew he wanted to.

Bumblebee didn't follow, but clenched her own fists so tight they also could've broken a broom handle.

* * *

"_How does that feel?"_

"_Like I have a metal prod in my head."_

_Dr. Takamoto laughed. "It is funny because it is true." He twisted a dial and a warm sensation spread through Speedy's shoulder like his arm had fallen asleep. "Whoops. How about now?"_

_Speedy raised his arm and flexed his fingers. They whirred and made a fist. "Much better." He levered his thumb upright and raised his arm. _

_Dr. Takamoto laughed again. "You have taken to this like a duck to water, Speedy-san."_

"_Yeah, well, I'm highly motivated. When do you think I'll be able to shoot a bow and arrow again?"_

_Dr. Takamoto sucked in his cheeks in a pained expression. "Not for some time, I am afraid. We need to ensure the neural connectors are fully functioning and properly integrated to your nervous system. This is not like screwing in a light bulb or changing a fuse, Speedy-san."_

_There was no mirror, but Speedy knew he looked like Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies, with wires trailing across the floor to a range of intimidating machinery, and several cables plugged right from his brain to the back of his chair. He didn't pretend to understand what Dr. Takamoto's team were doing, or how any of it was even possible, but in a few weeks they'd come this far. It had been painful and gruelling (some evenings he took the nightly knock-out injection so gratefully he worried he might get addicted), but Dr. Takamoto worked on Cyborg and never steered him off course or lied to him. Speedy trusted him and his team. _

"_Yeah, I sort of figured that out for myself."_

* * *

Speedy woke up in a cold sweat. The sheets pooled around his waist. When he ran a hand through his hair it came back wet.

"Damn it."

There was no scream on his lips. Most of the team bedrooms were on the same floor, so too much noise would wake the others and he didn't feel like dealing with them right now. Instead he gritted his teeth, shoved the nightmare through the cat flap of his brain, and got up to change the sheets. They were drenched with perspiration, as were his PJs, so he set about changing them and then the bed.

He felt like some little kid who'd wet himself. Even more so when traipsing back up the stairs yielded an encounter with Aqualad.

Jeez, the guy even slept in a unitard. A different unitard, but still a unitard.

"What?" Speedy demanded, aware how bad he looked with arms full of fresh bedclothes at 3a.m.

Aqualad's expression was unreadable in the poor light. He was also soaking, and Speedy remembered he sometimes slept in the pool when he was troubled or felt homesick for the ocean. Possibly he'd got up to fix himself a drink or something, but possibly he'd been waiting to catch his teammate whil he was vulnerable-

No. Aqualad was his friend, not an enemy. He wouldn't do that.

"_What_?" Speedy's voice had a ragged edge to it.

Aqualad tilted his head to one side. It was what he always did when he was about to say something that would really tick Speedy off – and he knew it. "I thought you grew out of 'little accidents'?"

Mission accomplished. "Screw you, pinhead."

"You okay?"

"Peachy freaking keen." Speedy couldn't get any pricklier if he grew spines.

Aqualad said nothing, but raised his arm as if he wanted to take the sheets and carry them for him. Reflexively, Speedy held them tighter, and the hand froze. For a second neither boy knew what to do, but eventually Aqualad retracted and folded his arms, leaning one shoulder against the wall. He still blocked the stairwell, but in a very casual, almost indifferent way, as though it was just too much trouble _not _to.

"Nightmares?"

"Why does everyone around here think they know what's going on in my head?" What S[eedy wanted to know was whether he was really that predictable, but it wasn't what came out of his mouth.

"We're just concerned about you," Aqualad said. "It's what friends do. We want to make sure you're as okay as you say you are."

"Do me a favour? Quit it."

"No can do. You committed to this team and we committed to you. Although maybe we should all just _be_ committed."

Another silence stretched between them. This one tasted different, like comparing finely blended tea leaves to teabags bought for fifty-nine cents and then stewed for a week in lukewarm water. Something changed between the two boys in that silence, a subtle but important change of dynamics that neither one could quite understand, but knew the same way they knew the sun would come up in the morning and go down at night.

"Another favour?" Speedy said in a different voice. "Don't try to be funny. You're so crap it's painful to listen to."

* * *

"_¿Está él aquí todavía¿Está él aquí todavía¿Está él aquí todavía¿Está él aquí todavía?"_

"_No, little dudes, he's not here yet."_

_Mas and Menos pouted, but soon resumed rushing around the Tower, setting everything right they felt was askew, and several things that weren't. Thanks to them and a bottle of anti-bacterial spray, the place was sparkling and everything had been alphabetised – even the kitchen utensils, as Aqualad found when they screamed at him for putting a fork next to a spoon in the cutlery drawer._

"_They're excited," he said now._

"_They've waited a long time for this." Bumblebee didn't drop her voice. She did __**not.**__ "We all have."_

_He nodded. He never wore a watch, even though he'd been given several waterproof ones for birthdays and Christmases. Instead he flipped open his communicator to check the time. "When did Cyborg say he'd get here?"_

"_Depends on the traffic. It shouldn't be long, though." The Tower doorbell gonged loudly. __"Speak of the devil."_

"_¡Él está aquí¡Él es casero¡Prisa!" __As one, Mas and Menos blew past to grapple for the hangar door control pad. _

_A large white and blue car slid through the doors and pulled up in front of them. _

_Bumblebee felt herself tightening inside, all her feelings scrunching up small while she pasted on a big smile and prepared to welcome home their wayward teammate. _

_Cyborg stepped out first. Speedy came after. He didn't look at them, and the edges of Cy's grin were slightly frayed. Still, Cy stuck out one massive hand and pumped her arm up and down in an enthusiastic greeting. _

"_Hey, Bee."_

"_Hey, Sparky. Good trip?"_

"_Traffic wasn't too bad." He didn't look at Speedy and Speedy stared solidly at his reflection in the T-Car's hood. _

_As Cyborg prattled on about air conditioning and the many benefits of cruise control, Speedy straightened his hair and mask. His movements were smooth, but the way he moved his left hand was subtly wrong; not jerky, as she might've expected, but … __**too**__smooth. Too efficient. There wasn't an ounce of hesitation anywhere._

_He was wearing gloves._

_Eventually the time came to greet him, too. Mas y Menos bounced like a couple of overeager Chihuahuas and thrust the carefully wrapped gift under Speedy's nose. _

"_Esto está para usted."_

_He took it without a word, opened it and took out the bottle of resin and soft cloth meant for keeping the string of his bow in perfect condition. It was expensive stuff, hand picked after the twins spent hours poring through websites to learn more about archery maintenance. Just as with his own appearance, Speedy was fastidious about his bow, arrows and quiver. Despite once living the life of a rich playboy's ward, Speedy could happily spend long evenings at home, repairing invisible nicks._

"_Thanks," he said woodenly. _

_Mas y Menos sagged, but perked up again almost immediately. __"¡También hemos hecho su comida del favorito¡Venga y vea por favor¡Hemos trabajado realmente difícilmente en ella!"_

_Cyborg shot Bumblebee and Aqualad a curious look. _

"_They made dinner," Aqualad explained. _

"_They spent the day destroying the kitchen," Bumblebee translated. She shrugged, having already forgiven their over-enthusiasm. "They really missed you, Speedy. We all did," she added awkwardly. He knew they'd missed him. They'd only told him about seventy million times when they called or went up to New York. _

_That was his cue to reply the same, but he didn't. He just stared at her for a second, like some Star Trek robot processing her words to test the truth of them. She briefly wondered if STAR Labs replaced just his hand, but chastised herself when he nodded and smiled._

_Well, the corners of his mouth turned up, at least. _

"_¡Prisa, prisa, prisa!" Mas tugged on Speedy's arm, while Menos pushed him from behind. Speedy was manhandled into the elevator, which dinged away, leaving Bumblebee, Aqualad and Cyborg to lock up and follow. _

_There was a pause in which you could hear a pin leaving a pinched finger and thumb. _

"_Well that was underwhelming," Bumblebee said at last. She turned to Cyborg. "Was he like that the whole trip?"_

_Cyborg sighed. "Pretty much."_

"_I thought he was just untalkative when we visited New York because STAR Labs is built like a jail." She caught his eye. "Sorry, buddy, but it is. They need to fire the interior decorator of the medical wing."_

"_Hey, I'm not arguing." Cyborg held up his palms on either side of his head. "I hated the place when I stayed there, too."_

"_I wasn't expecting him to run into our arms sobbing, but a hello might've been nice," said Aqualad, hands on hips. "He didn't even insult us. That's not like him."_

"_Yeah, well, the guy's been through a lot. Give him some time to acclimatise. He took well to the physiotherapy though. Dr. Simms said she's never had such a keen student since yours truly." Cyborg smirked. "But I still hold the record for weights benched and stamina on the track."_

"_Speedy's always been our long range guy," said Bumblebee. "Why the heck would he need to be a track and field star?"_

"_Because then he'd have beaten me."_

"_Say what?"_

_Cyborg and Aqualad exchanged a look. "It's a guy thing," they said in unison._

_

* * *

_

"Speedy."

Speedy looked up from sighting along his bow. The target range was littered with bull's-eyes and dummies stuck full of arrows in non-lethal places. "So they brought you into this too?"

Robin didn't react. Speedy hadn't heard him approach, but that was Robin all over. You never knew he was there until he was ready for you to know, and then you couldn't ignore him. Right now he was staring contemplatively, the way he did the first time they met and circled each other at the Tournament of Heroes.

Speedy kept his tone light. It was the only way to be with Robin. Once, he'd tried to out-po-face him and got a headache from all the brooding. "So did Bumblebitch put you up to this? Are you supposed to talk me into giving up being a Titan?" He restrung his bow and sighted along it. "Well you can just-" he let it fly into the centre of the target "-forget it."

"Actually, I came because I heard you haven't really talked to anyone about what happened with Cheshire."

"Not that again. I don't need to talk about it. It happened, it wasn't great, but I survived and I'm over it. I can still shoot my arrows, which is all that really matters to me."

One side of Robin's mask lifted. "I know a thing or two about enemies making you feel helpless. You never truly forget something like that."

"Maybe _you_ can't."

"Trust me; it's not a good idea to bottle it up. It always comes out eventually."

One side of Speedy's mask started to raise, and then stopped. Sometimes it really was goddamn creepy how much he and Robin mimicked each other. They'd been called clones more than once, when talking shop or posing emotively on rooftops – though Speedy always secretly thought he looked more dashing than the Boy Blunder. Both denied it, but when they were together they seemed to slip into a special rhythm – one only those who'd been shadow-sidekicks to established heroes, before they were Titans, could understand.

"_I'm_ not going to let some psychic manifestation of Cheshire beat me into a bloody pulp in the basement," Speedy said tartly.

Robin didn't wince in all the ways that didn't count. Speedy noticed the ways that did and smirked. Sometimes there was something to be said for that rhythm.

"At least if you did, you have a team who'd be behind you one hundred percent," Robin said.

Speedy actually snorted at that. The memory of Bumblebee telling him to quit was still too raw and fresh. She was leader. She had veto power to kick him off the team if she wanted, though a quiet part of him argued she wouldn't throw her weight around that way. No, she'd be more subtle about it. Maybe Aqualad and Mas y Menos would be behind him, but she'd probably use hallucinations of the kind Robin went through to make him leave Titans East. He could just imagine her, getting all up in his face and wagging her finger. He bet Starfire never did that to Robin – no, Starfire just looked on with concern and beat the hell out of whatever got in her way. For Speedy, Bumblebee _was_ the thing in his way.

"Do the rest of your team know you're here?"

"Actually, it was Starfire's idea," said Robin. "You're lucky I persuaded her not to come along, or she'd be treating you to some traditional Tamaranean spirit-lifting ceremony."

"They have those?"

"Oh yeah. It involves glorp-pipes and gingral stew. Don't ask," he added, finally unfolding his arms to raise a hand. "Tamaraneans put a lot of stock in being healthy in all ways, even if it kills you."

"I am healthy." Speedy flexed his new hand. It hadn't failed yet, and neither had he.

"Maybe. We're both the only members of our teams without superpowers, but neither of us have anything to prove, you know."

"Look, Robin, I appreciate you coming all the way out here to give me a pep talk, but I'll tell you what I told everyone else: I'm fine. Let me do my job."

"I wasn't going to stop you."

"You weren't?"

"No. Being back into the field was what helped get me back on my feet after Slade's … after Slade."

Speedy nodded. "I don't suppose you could convince Bumblebitch of that, could you? She's got it into her head that I'm better off hidden away in some retirement home for failed teen heroes."

"She said that?"

"She said I should 'retire'. She thinks I can't cope anymore."

"Can you?"

In one fluid motion, Speedy drew an arrow from the quiver on his back, nocked it and let it fly. It seared through the one he'd shot previously, leaving two tremulous wood shavings where an arrow used to be. "I can cope."

Robin nodded politely. "For your own sake, and those you protect, I hope so."

* * *

_The building had security so tight a mouse farting would find itself on the business end of a laser. Bumblebee waited, straight-backed, to be let into Cheshire's cell. _

_When she was finally allowed entry they made her take off her Stingers. She wasn't happy about that, but agreed because otherwise they'd never let her in. One guard said something about a strip search, but she eyeballed him into submission and left his partner shaking with silent laughter that a truck-sized man could be cowed by a teenage girl with hair like Mickey Mouse ears._

_If she hadn't been told the girl was Cheshire, Bumblebee never would have guessed. Without her mask, claws and stylised kimono, Cheshire looked like any girl from the burg. Her long black hair was pulled into a braid and her olive skin looked wan against her bright orange jumpsuit. The suit was a little too big, making the collar swamp her chin and neck. The picture of a pathetic creature wearing hand-me-downs was only enhanced by her tiny, fine-boned hands._

_Those tiny, fine-boned hands, which had tortured Speedy for hours… _

_Bumblebee's soft mouth hardened. _

"_Why?" she demanded. It was what she'd come to ask – what they'd all wondered in the weeks since the abduction, but what only she had physically come here to ask. _

_Her teammates thought she was tracking a lead on an illegal mutant-dog-fighting ring, and she was content to let them think it. She hated lying to them, but Speedy would blow up if he knew. He just wanted to sweep everything under the carpet, and when he finally got out of hospital she couldn't see that changing. Still, he'd changed. Maybe not a lot, and maybe (except for his missing hand) not yet where it showed, but he __**had**__ changed. She could see it in the way he didn't stare at the nurses' cleavage, and hear it in his carefully casual voice as he talked about getting his test results back. He wasn't the thoughtlessly arrogant Speedy she'd come to know since forming Titans East. For that reason Bumblebee felt justified doing her research and, after what __**that**__ turned up, coming here today to confront the reason for his change. _

_Cheshire raised her head and fixed Bumblebee with dreary green eyes. In books, the villain was always beautiful when she took off her mask. Cheshire was pretty but not stunning. The teenage girl part of Bumblebee's brain – the part that used to sharpen its verbal-insult claws and look forward to spats with Jinx – observed that Cheshire was actually quite plain. Her eyes weren't emerald, or jade, or sea green. They were the colour of a washed out sweater, or grass during a hot Summer. She didn't look like someone capable of mutilating and killing grown men twice her bodyweight._

_Cheshire didn't answer._

"_Why did you come to my city?" Bumblebee got closer to the bars. Random bursts of electricity zinged along them to keep Cheshire contained. Bumblebee could hear the buzz. "Why did you capture my teammate?"_

_Cheshire tipped her head to one side but said nothing. Her mouth was tiny, the lower lip only slightly fuller than the top._

"_Why him?" Bumblebee went on. "I know you were the one to capture him when the Brotherhood of Evil was sent out after all the Titans. Did you want revenge? Was that it?"_

_Cheshire tipped her head the other way, like a puppy sitting by a pair of shredded shoes, unable to understand why someone was angry with it._

"_Answer me," Bumblebee barked in frustration. "You systematically tortured him for three days, and in that time you never once came after the rest of Titans East. Nor did you make a move against any other Titan. You escaped from a facility hundreds of miles away, but instead of fleeing the country or hiding out, you crossed entire states to reach Steel, rented an apartment under a fake name, bribed a local thug to tell you where Speedy patrolled, and had that thug pretend to mug you in a trap purposely designed to get Speedy alone and away from his team. That kind of premeditation says this was personal. So explain it to me: why? Why was it personal, Cheshire? You captured Speedy for the Brotherhood, but it wasn't just him who defeated you in the end. I think I landed a punch or two on you myself, but I didn't see you sticking your claws into me. What made you … do what you did to him? Why?"_

_Her voice was shriller than she'd intended. Bumblebee needed to understand. She took a threatening step forward and imagined the guards scrambling to haul her out of there. She used to be part of HIVE. She wasn't proud of that, but she'd learned from it. Sometimes all supervillains understood was force and power, and where they stood in terms of it._

_Cheshire didn't flinch. _

_Bumblebee controlled her temper. "Was it hatred? Do you hate him?"_

_At last, a reaction. Slowly, Cheshire shook her head. _

"_Was it revenge?"_

_Another slow shake. She still said nothing, but pointed at the middle of her chest and smiled. Then she mimed drawing someone in for a kiss and smiled wider, hands running up and down invisible sides and tousling phantom hair. _

_Something flared inside Bumblebee. When later quizzed, she couldn't put a name to it, but it tore across her nerve endings and motivated her limbs to move on their own, so that when she found herself with Cheshire's collar in her grip she was genuinely surprised. She didn't remember shrinking through the bars of the cell, though her wingtips prickled where electricity had clipped them. Her conscious mind only came back online when she'd drawn back a fist to punch Cheshire's lights out. _

_Cheshire grinned at her. Close to, her eyes weren't even truly green. They were greyish, like fresh concrete mixed with dead leaves. In them Bumblebee could see a complete lack of … person. It was like holding onto a shell of what should've been a teenage girl, just like her, except whoever made Cheshire put the pieces together without any real idea of what made someone __**human**__. What looked through those eyes snapped Bumblebee back to herself and made her release the orange jumpsuit as if she'd been burned._

_Cheshire plopped back into her chair. She was manacled to it by chains attached to her wrists and ankles, so when Bumblebee let her go the entire seat also clacked down. She grinned wider and wider, and started to snigger – breathy sniggers with no voice, just the push and pull of air in and out a pair of lungs. It sounded like the clatter a gibbet of bones might make rattling in a cold wind. _

_The sound chilled Bumblebee to her marrow. What the hell had happened to this girl to make her this way? Without the mask she wasn't just nobody, she was a somebody who never was. _

_Bumblebee lived under Brother Blood's control for a long time before she broke free. Thinking back to it made her feel sick, especially when she thought of what might have happened if she hadn't had Aqualad and the other Titans' help in turning on her old headmaster. She'd got close enough to see what life under Blood's thumb would have turned her into: cold, ruthless and unforgiving. Even so, she couldn't begin to understand the motivation of someone like Cheshire, who was so alienated from normal emotions she tortured a boy she liked and probably would've killed him had she not been stopped. No wonder the Brotherhood pounced on her during their recruitment drive. _

_Bumblebee exited the cell and brushed past the onrush of guards. "I'm done here."_

"_But -"_

"_I'll see myself out."_

* * *

_To Be Continued…_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_**She couldn't talk, which was a first for her. She always had plenty to say; loudly, proudly, whether you wanted her to or not. **_

-- A riff off a similar from Kevin Smith's film _Dogma_.

_**Speedy looked up at her like she wasn't just mad, but the star pupil at Arkham Academy.**_

-- The Elizabeth Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane is a psychiatric hospital in the DC Universe, located on the outskirts of Gotham City, and is where those of Batman's foes considered to be legally insane are incarcerated (sane are incarcerated at Blackgate Penitentiary). Inspired by the works of H. P. Lovecraft, the asylum was created by Dennis O'Neil and first appeared in _Batman_ #258 (published October 1974).

_**He just stared at her for a second, like some Star Trek robot processing her words to test the truth of them.**_

-- That would be Data, a character portrayed by Brent Spiner in the _Star Trek: The Next Generation_. Dramatically, Data is a very rough counterpart to Spock from _Star Trek: The Original Series_, in that he has a rational, analytical mind and finds humans and human behaviours (like lies and deception) hard to understand.

Once again fanart played a large part in this chapter - specifically in helping me to visualise Toon Cheshire minus her mask. To help picture her for yourself, visit kashiro . deviantart . com / art / Cheshire - 28306571


	3. I Can't Turn Back the Time

_Tell me, where did I go wrong?  
Everyone I loved, they're all gone.  
I'd do everything so differently,  
but I can't turn back the time.  
There's no shelter from the storm  
Inside of me. _

There's no way out of this dark place,  
No hope, no future.  
I know I can't be free,  
But I can't see another way.  
I can't face another day.  


-- From _No Way Out_ by Phil Collins.

* * *

**3. ****I Can't Turn Back the Time**

* * *

Mas y Menos trailed after him like kicked puppies. Speedy tried to ignore them, but after the third time they dashed in to tie up a crook he'd already taken down, his patience wore out.

"Guys, I don't need any help."

"Le estamos ayudando," said the breeze.

A petty thief landed in a heap at his feet, wrists and ankles bound.

Speedy pinched the spot between his eyes. He'd taken to wearing gloves on both hands, if only because of the Michael Jackson comments when he tried to leave his flesh hand free. The press of Steel City weren't as bad as Jump for writing ridiculous stories about their Titans, but their journalism did have a National Enquirer lilt.

He didn't hate his new hand, but it _was_ a constant reminder of Cheshire, which he could do without. At least his grip never wavered now. He could line up a shot better than even Green Arrow on his best day, and he could do it repeatedly. His fingers never cramped and his wrist never trembled with fatigue.

He didn't owe Cheshire a thing.

_Whump_. The thief's partner landed on top of him.

"Mas! Menos!"

They were front and centre in an instant. "¿Sí?"

"Stop. Doing. My. Job. For. Me." Speedy said it slowly to make sure they heard. He couldn't make sure they understood, but he could make damn sure his words went in their little ears. "Okay? _¿Usted entiende?_" His accent was terrible, his grammar probably awful, but it was one of a handful of stock phrases he'd committed to heart – 'Do you understand?' 'Are you injured?' 'Get off the furniture!' 'Touch my stuff and die.'

Mas sat on Menos's shoulders. He looked down while his brother looked up, and Speedy could've sworn they spoke without using words. They did that sometimes. It was freakier than snow in July and toilet water swirling the wrong direction.

"No quisiéramos que usted estuviera lastimado otra vez."

"Huh?" Speedy struggled with his translation.

Menos took a deep breath. "We do not want you again be hurt."

"Not if can help it," Mas finished, painstakingly pronouncing each word so the consonants snapped off his tongue and clacked against his teeth. Without Control Freak's remote their speech was uneven at best.

Speedy boggled. "You speak English."

Both twins looked uncomfortable. "We … preferring not to," Mas enunciated.

"Troublesome," said Menos. "Can faster think than talk."

"We are getting mixed up. Our wordings come out all wrongness and then we are forgetting what we like to say next."

"So we preferring not to."

"But you're speaking it …" - something occurred to Speedy mid-sentence - "… now." A few choice realisations fell into place. _Aw, crap._ "It wasn't your fault."

The distress in their faces told him he'd hit the nail on the head. Possibly with a cartoon mallet.

"You don't have to feel responsible. I told you to go home that night. You just did what I said. It's not like you abandoned me – you couldn't know what was going to happen."

"We … could not … protecting for you," said Menos.

"We are team." Mas patted the centre of his chest. "We are … family."

_Double crap._ "It still wasn't your fault." Speedy ignored the knot of indefinable emotions that bunched inside his chest, a slippery tangle of confusion, anger and … pleasure?

Well, yeah. Of course pleasure. They _were_ his teammates after all. And some days he felt more like their big-brother-come-babysitter than just some guy who shared their roof. Mas and Menos wormed their way into your heart no matter how much you tried to keep them out. They had that weird ability some children have, of being adorable without being saccharine, and forgivable as much as they were annoying. They saw the world in black and white, good and bad, us and them, and anyone who came into contact with them eventually fell to the urge to protect them from their monochrome views of the world. Even him. Taking a sabbatical at STAR Labs hadn't changed that.

That was how he thought about it now – taking a sabbatical. Just freeing up some time to take five, get his head together, like any good professional did when the heat was on and they needed to cool off. He _chose_ to accept Cyborg's offer and go to STAR Labs. He could've said no. He could've retired. He hadn't. He, himself, had chosen to get this hand, just as he originally chose to follow Green Arrow, so there was no point bitching about it now.

"We -" Menos started.

"Look, guys, I said it's okay, okay?" Speedy shouldered his bow and stood straighter, closing the conversation. "If you try to say anything different I'll shoot you. How does that sound?"

Mas broke into a wide grin. Menos broke into an even wider one. They weren't simple, but they were still kids. They believed wholeheartedly that saying sorry and being forgiven made everything okay. "¡Gracias!"

"Usted es agradable," said Speedy.

They pulled simultaneous faces. "Su acento es malo, pero le amamos de todos modos."

"Uh, thanks." Speedy scratched his head. "I think."

* * *

"_Oh! Uh … hey, Sassafras."_

_Speedy looked up from the washbasin. A second later he nodded._

_Bumblebee leaned on the doorframe. "You done? Only you left the door unlocked so I didn't realise someone was in here, so I just thought I'd … I mean, I can come back later … or I could go up to the third floor bathroom-"_

"_I'm done." He scrubbed his hands in the towel and brushed past her. He smelled of soap and some kind of lineament, but it was that hand, glinting dully as he pulled on his gloves, which caught her eye. _

_It didn't sparkle or shine like she thought maybe it ought to. Speedy was all about the glamour, right? His bedroom was covered in posters of himself and blown up photographs from newspapers and magazines. What didn't feature his own face pictured beautiful models he'd posed with and celebrities he'd met. Everything about Speedy was sensationalist, like he was trying to prove something. Maybe he was telling Green Arrow that he didn't need him anyway; that it didn't matter they'd parted on the sharp edge of an argument. Either way, Speedy had always been a glory hog with an eye for how to sparkle for the paparazzi when the rest of Titans East looked like death warmed up. _

_But the hand didn't sparkle. Instead it threw off a lacklustre gleam, like a pitcher throwing under instead of over-arm. There was less finesse to an underarm throw. Elementary school kids threw underarm, the ball flying high into the air like some off-course satellite. Look to see how high it goes, where it comes down, nobody knows…_

"_Take a picture," Speedy said, not casually but not sharply. The phrase sounded … weary, actually. As clichéd as it ever could. "It'll last longer." _

_Bumblebee blushed. She never blushed, but this time she blushed. "Sorry."_

_He shrugged and sauntered down the corridor._

_Bumblebee clicked the bathroom door shut and pushed the little button on the handle that locked it. She looked in the mirror, pushed and pulled at her face like all teenage girls, looking for blemishes that don't exist, or at least don't loom as large as teenage girls think they do. She tugged down a lower eyelid with one finger, pressed down the tip of her nose to see how it would change the look of her face, and examined her chin for zits. She checked her toothbrush to make sure nobody else had used it, brushed her teeth, washed her face and re-examined her face for zits now her make-up was gone. Satisfied there were none, she wiped her spit from the edge of the sink, put down the toilet lid, sat on it, and sobbed like her heart would break. _

_

* * *

_

There were never tears in Bumblebee's eyes. Not even when Gizmo crushed her ankle and she had to be whisked away by paramedics, or when Mister Lava snapped her collarbone like a dry twig. She cussed and grunted, and even bit her lip so hard it bled while the broken bones were examined, but her eyes were always resolutely dry.

That was in the early days of Titans East, when they barely knew how to say hello to each other without Cyborg to guide them. Bumblebee was devoted to her role as leader and thought it meant she had to be S-T-R-O-N-G at all times, never showing frailties, even to her team. The guys weren't much better, each determined not to be out-machoed by a girl. One mess-up led to another, and another, until each of them had ended up in the hospital to flick cockroaches off their IVs.

After everyone had done a stint in Steel General they had a team meeting where they resolved to make sprucing up the city medical facilities a priority, and to never go back into them except as visitors.

Well, one out of two wasn't bad.

Steel General accepted several hefty donations over the next few months, allowing them to revamp most of their equipment and even install a new maternity wing and overhaul the ER. Most donations were anonymous, but Wayne Tech donated several pieces of brand new, expensive, state-of-the-art equipment developed by its own researchers. Even better, it _wasn't _sold on the black market after Bumblebee and Aqualad convinced the police that the hospital's bureaucrats were skimming vital resources to line their own pockets.

When Bumblebee got to sample the new facilities firsthand, she at least admitted Steel General was cleaner, brighter, and more hygienic than it used to be.

The light was like a needle stabbing deep into her retina, seeking out the optic nerve and driving a hypodermic full of acid into it.

"What the hell happened?" she asked the backs of her eyelids, head reeling and tongue too thick and flabby.

Speedy prised himself off his seat and bent over her, amazed she was awake so soon.

Her face drooped in places where the analgesics had slackened the muscles and her complexion reminded him of raw concrete. Who knew black girls could look so sallow? She looked terrible; much younger and vulnerable with her hair loose and without the war paint of her make-up. She looked softer somehow, not S-T-R-O-N-G or even strong. One skinny shoulder stuck out of her hospital gown. The effect was altogether disturbing.

_The girl was slender as a candle flame, with an elusive, glancing beauty. She looked soft and vulnerable, her clothes too big and her hair too long, dwarfing her face with its big watery eyes. She cowered when he came near, hunching up against the wall with her knees to her chest, even though the mugger was gone._

Speedy shook the memory away. "Go back to sleep," he told Bumblebee.

"What. Happened?" It wasn't a command, it was a Command. Parts of her face didn't work and she was cut, bruised and swollen, but she was fighting the helplessness. She opened her eyes and they burned even through the painkillers.

He sighed and handed over to Aqualad, who was always better at this shit. Speedy couldn't cope with girls who didn't cry. Strong women confused him, since he grew up with debutantes who could barely string a together sentence without simpering. The day Bumblebee simpered was the day he stabbed an arrow into his own brain.

He could feel the thrum of phantom rain against his skin and quickly left the room.

* * *

"_Heike?" _

_His nursemaid looked up from her sewing. She didn't need to sew. Ollie either sent stuff away to be cleaned and fixed, or just threw it in the trash, but Heike came from a large family where you made stuff last. She'd always tried to instil the same values in Ollie since she came to work for him as head of his maids, but so far she'd been less successful than with the young charge he brought her three years ago. _

"_Yes, Master Roy?"_

_Roy pursed his lips and rocked back on his heels. "What makes girls different than boys?"_

_Heike's needle paused halfway through a stitch. "Well." She put it down on her wide lap. "I did not think I would be having to answer that one."_

"_I know they have different … bits," Roy waved vaguely with one little hand, "but apart from that. Like, why can boys do stuff girls can't?"_

"_Such as?"_

"_Fight crime and stuff."_

"_Who says girls cannot fight crime?" _

"_Nobody __**says**__, but everybody __**knows**__. I just wanna know why. And other stuff, like, why are girls allowed to cry when they fall and hurt themselves, but boys gotta be men and grin and swear at it."_

"_I think you are meaning 'grin and bear it'."_

"_That too."_

"_I think your head is being filled with nonsense, Master Roy. Girls may fight crime (though I would not be recommending it), and boys may cry if they are hurting themselves."_

"_Crying's sissy. I'm no sissy."_

"_Crying is a perfectly natural thing. Everybody cries."_

"_Not me."_

_Heike raised an eyebrow. "You cried when you tumbled off your tricycle."_

"_That was different. I was just a little kid then."_

"_And now you're not?"_

"_Heike!" he exclaimed, like she was supposed to have noticed he was seven and therefore nearly fully grown. _

_She gave a sigh-laugh, the noise she always made when having interesting conversations with Roy. He made her feel old and young at the same time. This wasn't an unusual conversation in the grand scheme of things. It was not the only time the world would hear a child ask that question, or make those claims, but Master Roy was hers so that made this time special. _

_She put aside her sewing, pulled him into her lap and rubbed a hand through his short red hair. Ollie took him to the barber's last week. They always cut it too short there. Roy came back looking like a little soldier. She would prefer to let it grow a little; perhaps give him a fringe or sideburns for when he was a teenager. Heike missed the seventies. _

"_Hei-ke." Roy squirmed but didn't pull away._

"_Everybody is the same on the inside, Master Roy," she said firmly. "Do not be so quick to limit people according to whether they are boys or girls, poor or rich, black or white," - she patted her own round stomach - "skinny or fat."_

"_You're not fat," he parroted, "you're just big boned."_

"_What I am is addicted to doughnuts and __Bratkartoffeln__. But you understand what I am saying?"_

"_This is about equality again, isn't it?"_

_It was a favourite topic – and so it should be. Heike was of the opinion not enough parents encouraged in their children the qualities of acceptance and kindness toward their fellows. Too many times she'd been spat at or egged for her German accent, or tended Ollie's wounds when he returned from violence between blacks, whites, Chinese, Hispanics, gays, straights, males, females, liberals, traditionalists and any other division people could think of. _

"_Yes, Master Roy. It is about equality again. That is what Master Oliver fights for – so people can walk the streets of this city as equals, unafraid and proud of who and what they are."_

"_I thought Ollie just kicked the butts of scumbags with chum for brains."_

_Heike frowned. "I really am needing to have a word with him about how he talks around you."_

_Roy harrumphed. _

_

* * *

_

"Speedy?"

"Yeah?" He was balancing boxes of KFC in his arms and answered distractedly.

Aqualad stood with feet not quite shoulder-width apart; a very solid stance. "We had a phone call while you were out. She'll be home tomorrow."

"Oh. That's good. You were the veggie-burger, right?"

"Yeah. Aren't you pleased?"

"I'm ecstatic," Speedy deadpanned. "Now take this food before it ends up on the floor. Where are Mas and Menos?"

"In the bathroom washing up. I thought you'd have more reaction than that."

Roy flashed back to standing in the rain, bowstring straining as the downpour tried to make it lose tension. He heard his own voice and shook it away. Not yet. Not ever, if he could help it – unlikely, if Bumblebee was coming home tomorrow. "You want me to dress in drag and do the hula?"

Aqualad frowned, but in a good way, not the worried frown he'd been using since Roy got back from New York. "Wise guy."

Something clicked and a piece of the world shifted back into the middle.

* * *

"_So a whole bunch of international supervillains are broken out of their cryogenic suspension unit, and you're only now telling us about it, after __**I **__call __**you**__!?" Bumblebee's fury was palpable. "What the hell you people got for brains in Washington? Do you got any idea what withholding that kind of information has done?"_

_The unlucky clerk on the phone tried to pacify her, but she wouldn't be appeased. She demanded a full list of those who had been broken out, plus who had and hadn't been recaptured by the authorities. _

_It emerged they hadn't told the original Titans either, though someone had since hacked into their database and read the files there. Nothing taken, and no damage left. Bumblebee was willing to bet that was Robin and Cyborg. Gizmo would have devastated everything just for kicks._

_It came as no surprise to find Cheshire on the list._

"_They don't trust us," she furiously told Aqualad. "They think we're just a bunch of kids. Who the hell do they think captured these guys in the first place?"_

"_It doesn't matter. We know now."_

"_It __**does**__ matter. There ain't gonna be no next time like this. They're gonna treat us with the respect we deserve and keep us in the loop so – so we can stay in the loop!" _

_He obviously caught the slip and understood its meaning. Damn it. _

_Aqualad patted her arm. There were very few people she would allow to do that, but she and Aqualad had been though a lot together. When she first started tracking Brother Blood as a newly minted good guy, it was Aqualad who showed her what to do, what to say and how to act like a Titan. He took care of her even when she said she could cope on her own, reintroduced her to life on the legal side of the line, and watched her back while they worked as a duo. In many ways he was her best friend – or the closest she'd ever come to having one. _

_Damn, damn, damn._

"_He's okay. He's getting better, just like the doctors said he would."_

_She wanted to believe it, except Speedy still treated her like she had bubonic plague. When she walked into a room he walked out, or clammed up tighter than the bright lips of an old wound. He talked to her in a monotone, rarely fought back or pushed her buttons just to piss her off. He wouldn't __**argue**__ with her. She never thought she'd miss that. She thought her life would be easier if he stopped being such an arrogant asshole. Now she'd give anything for him to start acting like one again._

"_Call everyone together for a briefing. We got us some villains to catch."_

_

* * *

_

Bumblebee stepped firmly through the door. It was a nice big step, full of authority. It was a step that said, "Leader is home, you better have cleaned the rotten turkey out the fridge."

Then she was nearly knocked off her feet by Mas y Menos.

"Bumblebeeeeee!"

"Gnyark!"

"Bumblebee! Bumblebee! Bumblebee!"

"Need … to breathe …"

A set of blue-gloved hands prised them off. "Okay, boys, don't kill her before she's been home five minutes," cautioned Aqualad.

"What the heck did you feed them – pure sugar?" Her ribs already ached. Being squeezed from both sides hadn't helped, but the pain was offset by the warm glow of being appreciated. She smiled and yanked back both boys' hoods to ruffle their hair. It was shaggy and could use a cut, but they looked so adorable with it flopping into their eyes that she just smiled more and allowed the happiness of being home to consume her.

Aqualad was less effusive. "Are you okay?" Not 'how are you?' He needed to make sure of the answer he got. Aqualad liked to work in absolutes. Kind of ironic in their line of work, where evil never seemed to stay absolutely gone.

"Fine, fine." Bumblebee waved him off. "I see you didn't blow up the Tower while I was gone."

"We _can _be trusted on our own, you know."

"The jury's still out on that one."

The last figure lurked in the shadows. Bumblebee got the feeling he'd been coerced into attending this little welcome party. His sulky manner didn't match his teammates' liveliness. Her stomach sagged as she realised he wasn't going to give her that rude little smirk he did when he knew he was pissing her off. He radiated indifference. It was like she'd never been away – or at least like he never came to see her that time in the hospital grounds.

She swallowed her disappointment. "Couldn't you at least _pretend_ you're happy to see me, Sassafras?"

Speedy unfolded his arms. "Welcome home," he said in a monotone.

Mas frowned. "Eso no era muy agradable."

"¡Usted debe ser que da la bienvenida ma's!" Menos finished.

"I _am_ being welcoming," Speedy replied. For all he sounded like a kid reading Shakespeare aloud to his class, he hadn't taken his eyes off her. "You're back. That's good. Can we go back to our regularly scheduled crises now?"

"We have crises?" Bumblebee asked.

"Don't we always?" The words were chirpy, but he snapped them at her like an irascible terrapin too long out of its tank.

"¡Pero planeamos un partido!" Mas clapped his hands over his mouth and stared culpably at Bumblebee.

Menos whapped him on top of his head. "¡Boca grande!"

"Partido?" she repeated, attempting a translation in her head. "A … party? For me?"

Aqualad sighed and nodded.

"They destroyed the kitchen again, didn't they?"

"Oh yeah."

She winced, but tried to keep it out of her face. They'd had the best of intentions, but Mas y Menos and food mixers mixed like mercury and orange juice. "Um, thanks, guys," she told the twins. "I really appreciate it, but -"

"Un partido," they said emphatically, each grabbing a hand and pulling her towards the elevator. The scene was shockingly familiar, except this time she was the Prodigal Titan and Speedy was staying behind.

She looked over her shoulder in time to see Aqualad approach him. Before the elevator doors closed she heard him start to chew Speedy out for his lacklustre welcome.

"Especially after what happened to _put_ her in the hospital -"

"You don't have a clue what happened," Speedy retorted, his mask fixed on the elevator like he wanted to melt it, and his metal hand clenching by his side.

It was the last thing she saw before the doors slid shut.

* * *

"_Momma?"_

"_Yes, babycakes?"_

"_Why do folk gotta die?"_

_Momma blinked at her. "Who died?"_

_Karen nodded across the street. "Mrs. Fillmore's cat. She loved that cat. Poppa said it was her only friend after her husband went to heaven. If it was so important, why did Mr. Culkin hit it with his truck?"_

_Momma looked uncomfortable. She hated answering the kind of questions Karen liked to ask – like why there were dinosaur bones if God made the world, who invented AIDs, and why she had wings when Kristi down the street didn't. Momma was more at home with Ugly Apple Cake recipes and whose husband was playing away from home. She'd been disappointed when Karen's first trip to the Beauty Salon didn't inspire her to swap her difficult questions for gossip._

"_Mr. Culkin didn't mean to hit it with his truck. Anyhow, that cat was a mean ol' tom. Remember how it scratched you?"_

"_Only 'cause I pulled his tail. I wanted to see how long it was compared to Patti's." Karen said this matter-of-factly. She said a lot of things matter-of-factly – usually things that made people uncomfortable. She didn't act much like a five year old._

_Patti had a thin, ratlike tail that her mother had to sew special pants for. She, like Karen, was just one of the many children affected by the local nuclear plant's lazy approach to health and safety. It was a wonder that just the kids conceived in the area had been mutated, though the compensation paid to their families would probably not have increased if adults were also affected. Chicory was a small town. Like its namesake, nobody much cared what happened to Chicory. _

"_You never answered my question, Momma."_

_Momma sighed. "I don't know, babycakes. Sometimes folk just die. There ain't no rhyme nor reason to it – some folk live an' some folk die."_

"_That doesn't seem fair."_

"_Nobody said life gotta be fair."_

_Karen considered this. "If I was in charge, everything would be fair, and nobody would have to die. Especially important people – like Mrs. Fillmore's cat."_

"_Cats ain't people, honey."_

"_Daddy was people, and he was important."_

_Momma froze. The memory of her husband, burned up in that god-forsaken plant, was still too fresh. "He sure was," she murmured after a long, ragged moment. _

"_If life was fair, Daddy would still be alive and so would everybody else important. One day, I'm gonna be in charge of things, and then everything __**will**__ be fair. I'll make sure of it. You adults messed a lot of stuff up, but don't worry. I'll fix it. Things will work right when I'm running the show."_

_Momma laughed roughly. Karen's blunt but childish logic could always bring a smile to her face, even when she was thinking of her poor dead Darryl. "You just keep thinking that, babycakes."_

* * *

Bumblebee wanted to get back to training ASAP, but knew she had to re-enter her gruelling schedule in stages. The last thing she needed was to injure herself further by being impatient, though the thought of all the escaped Brotherhood villains still at large made her blood boil.

A cool breeze blew from the AC unit in the gym, as she ran through various kata to keep herself in shape. She may not be at her peak, but no way was she going to let herself get sloppy because of it.

She concentrated on precision over power, snapping out kicks and punches like they were part of some giant math equation. A quarter inch to the left and she could break an opponent's nose. A quarter to the right and she could send bone fragments up into his brain. Get it wrong and she could accidentally kill someone. In combat, especially in the field, there were rarely second chances.

She was on maybe her fourth or fifth.

* * *

_They gathered on the fringes of town, a ragtag bunch of freaks in pyjamas. Mutants to a one, they staggered and lurched into each other's arms, crying and asking if anybody else had made it out. However, nobody else crawled from the flames, and eventually they withdrew further, away from the blaze that had once been Chicory. It was as if someone had designed it that way – in one night Chicory's population could be counted on one hand, and all of them were children born with mutations. Not one freak died. _

_Momma always said one day the plant would blow. So did all the adults, but they said it like they didn't believe it would __**really**__ happen. The power plant __**was**__ Chicory. Everyone worked at the plant, or had relatives who worked at the plant, or sold things to people who worked at the plant. Without the plant there __**was**__ no Chicory._

_Literally. _

_You could just see the crater through the smoke. Karen flew up to see it. She couldn't fly far, her wings still ornaments more than tools, but she could go high enough to see there was no way anyone else was coming out. It looked like nobody had tried, either. _

"_Momma…"_

_There weren't even any fire-fighters. Nobody cared about Chicory._

_At thirteen, Karen was the eldest survivor. She marshalled the others, huddling them together for body warmth and trying desperately to tamp down her own grief so nobody else died tonight. She pursed her lips, set her shoulders, and used her bossy voice to move them up the rocky slope that overlooked the little township and check for injuries. Then she directed Jim Fletcher to heal everyone as best he could. Jim was only six so he did exactly what she said, too shell-shocked to think for himself after his parents and three brothers burnt to cinders because they didn't wake up._

_Eventually she realised they weren't shivering from cold, but from shock._

_The grey-haired man found them close to dawn the next day. By that time firemen from neighbouring towns were on the scene, but the survivor children stayed hidden. They were afraid of the big men, with their big hands and big voices. Their parents had kept them sheltered all their lives, afraid that if word got out their children would be taken away for study, so Chicory's mutants were suspicious of outsiders. They were especially wary after Patti Selwyn's dad, while brokering a deal between the plant and Blüd Industries, let it slip to the proprietor that his daughter had a tail as long as she was tall and could use like a third arm. For a while after that the kids were kept indoors, in case men in white coats descended to steal them away. Regular humans – people from outside Chicory who didn't know about the plant – didn't understand that while they were freaks, they weren't dangerous freaks like the monsters in Metropolis or the criminals in Gotham. They were just kids. _

_The grey-haired man had eyes that glowed red. He was a freak, just like them, so they trusted him more than the firemen. _

"_Don't worry, children," he said in a soft, soothing tone. "You've come through a great tragedy. I understand. I understand more than those ordinary humans would. I have a place where those with abilities like yours are valued, not feared. Nobody will take you away and experiment on you whilst you're under my care. Nobody will hurt you ever again. You'll be safe with me, and you can learn to use your abilities so nothing like this ever happens to you again."_

_Karen got the feeling this wasn't right, but when the grey-haired man talked she didn't feel like fighting so much. She didn't feel so bad about anything, not even Momma. The urge to cry faded, but part of her didn't want it to. She felt woolly – inside her head was a mess of imprecise thoughts, emotions and random impulses. _

"_We should speak to the authorities," she protested weakly. "We need to tell them what happened … I don't think the power-plant detonated from anything already inside, I think someone may have got in from the outside and … and sabotaged it …" _

_Man, her head hurt. Did she bump it? She couldn't remember. She __**did**__ remember the irresistible urge to go play kickball in the park, and the compelling knowledge of which route to take to get out of town safely, which overrode any impulse to go home. She remembered kneeling in the dirt, screaming, anger flooding through her as she realised she'd left Momma to burn, and then burying it when the other kids arrived with their own tears. They all ran away and didn't think about their families until they were too far to go back. It wasn't normal, not for all of them. One or two, maybe – blind panic drives away reason, but at least one person should have tried to go back, or at least __**thought**__ about it. Why didn't they? And why had no other townsperson felt that preternatural desire to be out of the house the night Chicory burned down, or known how to get out, or even roused from their beds? What was going __**on **__here? Why…?_

_Karen's brain felt like it was melting. _

_The grey-haired man's eyes glowed red. "What's your name?"_

"_Uh Karen. Karen Beecher."_

"_Hmm. We'll see about that." _

_He smiled. It sent moonbeams zinging up her spine and the taste of honey exploded in her mouth. Momma always put honey in tea instead of sugar. Momma's round brown face loomed large in Karen's mind, as if giving her blessing for Karen to go with this man. She didn't say anything corny like 'avenge me', or 'with great power comes great responsibility', but Karen could imagine her saying to do whatever it took to stay safe, and that she was with Daddy now. Momma and Daddy were together and happy in Heaven, but they didn't want her to join them just yet. No, they wanted her to grow and get strong, and to do that she should go with the nice man…_

"_Who are you?" Karen slurred, fatigue taking hold as adrenaline leeched from her system. _

_The grey-haired man smiled again. "If you're joining my school, you can just call me 'Headmaster'. Is that what you want, Karen Beecher? Is it?"_

_Karen tried to think about it, but her answer came easily. Too easily. "Yes, sir."_

* * *

_To Be Continued…_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_**Ollie either sent stuff away to be cleaned and fixed, or just threw it in the trash, but Heike came from a large family where you made stuff last.**_

-- Heike is a refugee from one of my other Teen Titans fics, _First Impressions_, in which she appears briefly to make comments about Bumblebee and Speedy's first meeting when Bumblebee comes to recruit him for Titans East. You don't have to have read that to understand Heike's role here, though.

_**Ollie took him to the barber's last week. They always cut it too short there. Roy came back looking like a little soldier. She would prefer to let it grow a little; perhaps give him a fringe or sideburns for when he was a teenager. Heike missed the seventies.**_

-- My little comment on his changing hairstyles throughout various comic books. Personally, I liked the Evil Speedy from the alternate universe in _Teen Titans Go!_

"_**What I am is addicted to doughnuts and **__**Bratkartoffeln**_

-- Brakartoffeln are fried potatoes, sometimes served with diced bacon and onions. My family loves them and the smell is more addictive than baking bread.


	4. I'll Be There Watching Over You

_There are things in life you'll learn and  
In time you'll see;  
'Cause out there somewhere  
It's all waiting  
If you keep believing.  
So don't run, don't hide,  
It will be all right.  
You'll see, trust me,  
I'll be there watching over you._

-- From _Look Through My Eyes_ by Phil Collins.

* * *

**4. ****I'll Be There Watching Over You**

* * *

"How are you?" Beast Boy asked. He'd been a lot friendlier with her since the Cheshire incident, as if his role in helping rescue Speedy granted him special privileges for her time. Bumblebee looked on him the same way she did Mas y Menos, except she was more confident about leaving Beast Boy alone in the kitchen for five minutes and _not_ coming back to Revenge of the Sugar Zombies.

"I'm kicking it," she replied.

Beast Boy looked confused. He pressed one eye up to the communicator so it looked huge to her. "You're what?"

"I'm fine."

"Oh. Uh, any word from your sources on how those villains broke out of stasis?"

"Not a peep."

"Poopie. I was kind of hoping you'd cracked the case while we weren't looking."

"Sorry, Salad Head. No dice."

"Salad Head?" He patted the top of his head theatrically, as if to check there were no tomatoes growing there, but she could tell he was pleased. It was one of the nicer nicknames he'd had, and one of the few that didn't mention snot. "So how's everyone over at Titans East?"

"They're fine, too. Well, mostly."

BB winced, though whether from sympathy or because she was a broken record, she wasn't sure. "Speedy?"

"He's in the 'goes' part of 'comes and goes'."

"Excuse me? I thought he was all better."

"That's debateable. He was getting better in a not-really kind of way, though Aqualad tells me he was brilliant with him and Mas y menos if you caught him in a good mood. But it's like he took three steps forward and ten steps back. He's been real off with everyone ever since saving my behind from Johnny Rancid." She chewed her lip. BB had been a Titan far longer than her. Despite him being younger, more immature and far goofier than herself, she trusted him. "The police from the scene say he looked like he was going to kill the guy."

"For hurting you?" BB waggled his ears suggestively.

"Maybe that was part of it, but I'm concerned that what I worried might happen nearly … well, _happened_."

"Uh…" BB was obviously confused. "Be kind, rewind."

She sighed. "I tried to make Speedy retire after he got back from STAR Labs."

"Yeah, I heard. I think everyone did. He was really mad at you. Even madder than Raven when I accidentally used the Book of Azar's flyleaf to write our grocery list. Even madder," he said after some consideration, "than Cyborg when I scratched the T-Car's new paintwork – totally by accident!"

She waved that most heinous of crimes away with a flick of her wrist and leaned forward in her chair, closing the gap between herself and the viewscreen as if to force Beast Boy to really hear what she had to say. "It's not healthy, the way he kept everything bottled up inside after Cheshire. You know from what happened to Robin after Slade, stress comes out in unhealthy, violent ways if it isn't dealt with properly."

Despite what a lot of people thought, BB wasn't slow. "You think that's what happened when he fought Johnny Rancid."

"'Fought' ain't exactly the word I'd use. 'Pulverised' might do the trick. 'Thrash to within an inch of his life' is another winner. Likewise 'damn near killed'."

"Oh." Beast Boy looked a little glazed, and perhaps puzzled, as distinct thoughts showed in his eyes. Finally he sighed and scratched the back of his head. "Do … you wanna talk to Robin about it?"

"No. Yes. I don't know. I'm suspicious, but if I confront Speedy with anything he might go off the deep end and do something needlessly reckless just to spite me; and if he puts himself in a situation where everything, including him, might blow up …"

"You really ought to talk to Robin about this. He's smart. He'll know what to do."

"No, he'll know what _he_ did, and he'll lecture me about how to handle the situation so we don't have a repeat of that. But Speedy ain't Robin. However Titans East approaches this, we gotta do what's best for _our_ teammate, not Robin II. Robin's too close to the situation – _his_ situation."

"Uh, I think I understand. Kinda." Beast Boy scratched his head again. "So … you don't wanna talk to Robin?"

"Not right now. Maybe later."

"Okay. Man, remember when things were nice and boring?"

"No," Bumblebee said truthfully.

* * *

"_Johnny Rancid? What kind of no-brainer villain name is that? Was Evildoer McMeenypants taken?" Bumblebee squinted at the file. _

"_I remember him," said Aqualad. "He was on Cyborg's list when Titans West left us in charge of Jump City. He nearly levelled the place once, as well as trying to remake reality into an emo punk music video."_

_She raised her eyebrows in surprise. "That was this guy?"_

"_He's bad news."_

"_Well he just showed up on our radar. Police reports put him on the north side of Steel. He just knocked over a Harley Davidson store – and by that I mean he drove a bike through the wall and collapsed the building." She hauled herself to her feet. "I'm due on patrol now. I'll go pick him up."_

"_I'll go with you," Aqualad started, but she shook her head. _

"_No, Gizmo's been spotted on the grounds of the Plutarch Research Laboratories. He's probably trying to lift their technology, and we all know the kind of nasty things Plutarch Labs churns out. They manufactured that mechanical shark Control Freak sicced on you. They'd been studying you for months specifically to build that thing, way before he knew who you were, but they're always hiding behind legal language and red tape. Unless we qualify with law degrees, there's no way we can touch them, much less shut them down. I don't trust them, and I trust Gizmo with their technology even less."_

_Aqualad's jaw set into a grim line. He could see the logic of her argument, but that didn't mean he had to like it. "You went to see Cheshire," he said suddenly._

_It was the last thing she expected at that moment. "Uh, yeah, I did. So?"_

"_Why?"_

"_To see if she knew where her Brotherhood buddies are at."_

"_I don't believe you. At least, I don't believe that's the full story."_

_The Titan Alert blared. The giant viewscreen in the main room abruptly flashed to an image of Gizmo, laughing manically and wearing a set of metal gauntlets three times the size of his hands. They crackled with blue-white electricity as he sank them into the side of a pylon, and immediately all power went down in the area around Plutarch Labs. At the same time the screen split, showing a grey-skinned brawny man on a motorcycle terrorising the Firth Bridge. _

"_Duty calls," said Bumblebee, but as she made to leave Aqualad grabbed her arm. _

"_Call for back-up."_

"_I don't need back-up for that punk, though you might for those glove thingies -"_

"_That wasn't a request, Bumblebee."_

_Her eyes narrowed and her hackles rose involuntarily. Aqualad was her buddy, but she once told Cyborg there wasn't a man on earth who could tell her what to do. "Excuse me, but exactly __**who**__ is leader of this here team?"_

"_Karen, please."_

_That brought her up short. They seldom used given names, so when one appeared it signalled a shift in the seriousness of the situation. Suddenly they weren't just talking teammate to teammate, they were talking friend to friend. Letting someone in on your secret identity was the superhero equivalent of a blood pact. _

_Bumblebee wrestled with her annoyance. "Why the sudden lack of confidence in me?"_

"_I just have a bad feeling about this."_

_She remembered the last time he had a bad feeling and sighed. "Okay, if it'll make you happy. I'll call Mas y Menos to come pick me up after they're done helping you."_

"_That's not what I meant -"_

"_Time's wasting, Water-boy." She shook him off. _

"_At least call Speedy-"_

"_No." She softened the sharpness of her voice. "No. Mas y Menos will be fine. Speedy's already patrolling the south side. It'd take too long for him to get to the bridge. The party would be over before he arrived."_

"_He's not made of glass, Karen."_

_There he went again. She took a step backwards, closer to the door. The siren still blared. She had to raise her voice simply to be heard. "I never said he was. Now move!"_

* * *

"I'm not made of glass, Water-boy."

Aqualad plunked his hands on his hips. He was more at home with being the serious one of the group; the level-headed one who grabbed Mas y Menos by their collars as they ran past, who placated Bumblebee so she didn't pummel Speedy and stopped her from working herself into an early grave. He was the peacemaker of the group, and also the one who got most frustrated at his teammates' bad habits.

Bumblebee knew all this, but that didn't stop her wanted to Sting him into the twelfth dimension – easier said than done since he took her Stingers away.

"You're still recuperating."

"I'm fit as a fiddle and twice as musical."

"What?"

"Give me my Stingers."

He hid them behind his back. "Not a chance. You're not supposed to be using these for another week at the very least – not until you can replace the energy you need to power them."

Not many people knew the current that ran through her Stingers didn't come from the weapons themselves, but from her. The Stingers were a conduit finely tuned to her bio-rhythms, but extended handling had always been a problem. That was why she used them sparingly – hand-to-hand had visceral satisfaction, plus it didn't give her a headache the size of Lake Michigan and she could walk in a straight line without collapsing afterwards. Most of the time.

"I was just practising! Gawd, Water-boy, quit acting like my mother." She tapped her foot and winced, the morning's _kata_ having left her muscles fatigued. She hoped Aqualad hadn't seen.

No such luck. "Bed rest," he said firmly.

"Like hell!"

"You always take things too far, Bumblebee. I'm stopping you this time before you undo all the progress you've made since you got home."

"One session with my Stingers ain't gonna -"

"You nearly died, Karen! You don't just bounce back from that in a week!"

She narrowed her eyes, gritted her teeth, but kept her voice smooth. "You think I don't know that? I may not have been conscious for a lot of it, but I know what happened. I know how far I can push myself."

"Yeah, as you push yourself even further. And don't bother looking for your spares. I locked them away somewhere even you can't get at them."

"What?"

"Tramm has them."

"You -" She stopped before she said something regrettable.

Nonetheless, Aqualad took a half-step away from her, as if distancing himself from her fury. "I'm only doing what you did for Speedy when he got home," he said softly. "I care about you, Karen. We all do. I don't want to see you hurt yourself when you only just got over someone else hurting you."

The fire in her dimmed but didn't go out. "Speedy was different."

"Was it?"

"Sure it was. Cheshire was a vindictive psychopath who trapped and tortured him for fun. I just got careless."

"Just being careless doesn't break your collarbone in three places. It doesn't damage your sternum. Careless doesn't smash your front teeth or give you internal bleeding."

She didn't look away and neither did he. Neither corrected this, but they both knew: In their lives, yes it did.

* * *

"_Don't die!"_

_Just the words, resonating through her head. Bumblebee rose from unconsciousness to a mouth that felt like she'd tried to eat raw concrete. "Fnuh…"_

"_Don't you freakin' die!"_

_What?_

_Someone lifted her and she might've cried out, or perhaps that was all in her head too – like the molten agony in her chest and across her shoulders. She had to be imagining that, since she had no recollection of it happening. _

_Her lungs constricted and something stabbed sharply inside so breathing felt like using a bike pump on a leaky balloon. No, that was real. She wanted to throw up. She felt like the fly that'd had its wings pulled off and crawled around on the ground, helpless and dying, before some kid put a boot on it. _

_The world was a mishmash of greys, reds and flashes of white that might have been streetlights, or pain so intense she could see it. That happened once before when Brother Blood got to Titans East and she tried to break his hold over her. Thinking hurt. So did breathing. Thinking was easier to give up, so she sank back into oblivion and hoped that would make the pain go away. _

"_Stay with me, you stupid bitch."_

_Not exactly words of comfort. She fought to open her eyes, but at least one was swollen shut and the other refused to work properly. She thought she could see red hair with redder blood on the forehead beneath, and felt it plip onto her own cheek._

_Actually, not blood plipping, but rain. Thunder boomed and raindrops smashed, faster and faster, against her tender skin. _

"_Shit."_

_Something covered her, but she was fading in and out of reality. There were frantic voices, the high-pitched squeal of a baby, or maybe a siren, and low murmuring that conjured images of crowds milling at the edges of a murder scene, kept back only by the magic yellow police tape. _

"…_I saw it all…"_

"… _Flew right over my head…"_

"…_Saved my little girl from going over the edge…"_

"…_Is she okay?"_

"…_Thought I was gonna die, man! I thought my number was totally up…"_

"…_He held that little kid over the side…"_

"…_Hit her so hard she dented the girder…"_

"…_I hadda make my kids look away. Nobody that age should hafta see that kinda shit, y'know?"_

"…_Hit her with his motorcycle while she was staggering around and she went right into the passenger door of my SUV…"_

"…_She never let go of that child until it was safe, even when he…"_

"…_T'ain't right, sugah…"_

"…_Is he dead? Did the other Titan kill him?"_

"…_Too dazed to fly away and then too injured…"_

"…_Just kept swinging even when she was blinded with her own blood! It was sick…"_

"…_He shocked her with some cattle prod thing and it was like those Stingers of hers just shorted right out. She was staggering around like a rat fulla poison…"_

"…_Like some nasty horror movie…"_

"…_Blood everywhere…"_

"…_Screaming so bad it turned __**my**__ stomach…"_

"…_Poor girl…"_

_Voice, voices, and even more voices, all crowding and merging into one big mass of white noise. The only palpable thing – the only real thing, she suspected – was the pain, which gnawed at her like a hungry dog on a beef joint it'd dragged from the fridge. _

"_I just busted my ass saving you. You'd better not die on me now. Oh God, Bumblebitch, stay with me."_

_Fading again. The pain started to fade too, which was a good thing. If only it would go completely, she could remember what the hell was going on…_

"_No! Bumblebitch!" _

_Darkness enveloped her._

"_Karen!"_

_

* * *

_

Speedy was on the practise range destroying targets from the centre outwards. "What do you want?" he asked without turning around.

Bumblebee halted. "You're good."

"I always was." He let another arrow fly. He was even better than when Robin saw him.

"Yeah. I'm beginning to see that."

High praise indeed. He kept his voice level. "Did you want something in particular?"

"No."

_Zing. Ch-thunk._

He used to think the world was full of glittering possibilities. He used to think that if you smiled at the right people and hit the right targets, you could achieve anything. He still wanted to believe that, but he had more trouble than he used to. He was getting there, though. It didn't hurt so much to raise the corners of his mouth and he swore he'd never miss a target again. He'd come a long way since she tried to bench him and he told her so.

"You have." Her voice sounded thick, like she had a cold. "I'm not sure I'm making the same inroads."

_Zing. Ch-thunk._

"I went to see Johnny Rancid."

"Was that wise?"

"I dunno. But I went." She sighed. "I think I regret it."

"You regret facing your demons?"

"No, but I regret going so soon. Is that why you left it so long before you went to see Cheshire?"

_Zing. Ch-thunk._

"I don't want to discuss that. Or her." He could just see her giving him a curious look from the corner of his eye. He fired the next arrow so hard it blew a hole in the back of the target. Since getting his new hand he'd had to upgrade his bow to hardier materials because his fingers kept breaking it, with the upshot that he did a lot more damage than he used to. "Anything else?"

"No. I just … no."

He lowered his bow and finally looked at her. "Why don't you just cry and get it over with?"

"Excuse me?"

"You never cry. Ever. Maybe you would be so messed up in the head over this if you just cried like a normal girl."

Or a moment she looked shocked, but it quickly gave way to anger. He was so used to seeing her angry. She hated showing her own failings. "'Messed up over this'? 'Normal girl'? Jeez, I don't know why I even bother with you."

"Neither do I. We'd both be happier if you didn't."

Her eyes blazed. "You want to talk about normal?"

"No."

She went on anyway, like she always did. "If anyone's not normal around here, I'm looking at him. I just wanted to _talk_. Was that so freaking difficult? But no, you have to get all up in my face with your emotional constipation. I just wanted to talk to someone who wouldn't sugar-coat a reply because I was stupid and went too early and broke down in front of the guards like some stupid-ass weakling-" She stopped. "Just forget it."

He let her get as far as the door before he spoke. "Wait."

"Get lost, creep."

"I don't think you went too early."

Her feet paused mid-step. "What?"

"Not for you. I don't think it was too early for you. You wouldn't be happy taking things slow. You're the kind of person who tears the band-aid off all at once."

Her expression said she was thinking about this. "Like you?"

He scowled. There she went, turning it back on him. He was trying to be nice. God knew, it was hard, especially with her. She didn't understand why it was so hard when he already acted like himself around Aqualad and Mas y Menos. She'd never said it, but he knew she recognised he treated her differently than them. She just pasted on her Game Face and kept plugging away, trying to force him to be as he used to with her – except that when he tried to be nice she did stuff like _this._ Her problems had nothing to do with Cheshire, or those three days, or anything else.

"_Think you're hard, huh? Think it makes you a tough guy to beat up a girl? Do you? __**Do you?**__"_

_Rain beat a tattoo against the concrete, turning it from grey to black. People milled around, questioning what they were seeing, asking each other if he was really going to do what they thought. He was a god guy, right? Good guys didn't go that far…_

He spun on his heel and peppered the target with enough arrows to turn it from 'damaged' to 'decimated'.

When he looked again she was gone.

* * *

_Well, this sucked more than industrial vacuum cleaner. _

_Bumblebee folded her arms and hunched over, lower lip so far out it could double as a rain trough. "This is bull-" She recalled she was supposed to be set an example in front of the general public. "This is ridiculous." It was a tame ending to an explosive sentence and made her feel like she'd been gypped somehow. _

_The axels of her wheelchair squeaked. They needed oil. The blanket around her legs was scratchy and ugly, and she wasn't allowed to wear a bra under the hospital shirt so she was sweaty in places that didn't bear thinking about – especially since all she had to keep clean were sponge baths from the nurses, which were even more embarrassing than being out in this freaking chair._

"_Here we go," said the nurse – Jo, according to her nametag. She had hair the colour of margarine and looked like she honestly answered ads requesting 'bubbly' and 'perky' as necessary vocational qualities. "You can see almost all the grounds from here, and the shade from the trees will stop you getting sunburnt."_

_Like sun could penetrate the indomitable smog over Steel?_

_Actually, today was quite bright, but Bumblebee was grumpy enough to ignore it. The hospital grounds were a determined green, with flowerbeds and a fountain shaped like a girl in a toga spilling water from a vase as she ran. The plate on the side said it was Persephone, and Bumblebee remembered enough of that myth to laugh. Yup, on its best day Steel City was still only a few steps ahead of Hades. She wondered who decided on that design for the fountain, then forgot it again as Jo patted her on the shoulder in a sisterly manner. _

"_I'll just go fetch your lunch. We can eat out here today. It's so beautiful, much nicer than that stuffy old room of yours. Won't that be fun?"_

"_Uh-huh." Bumblebee didn't unfold her arms or straighten her spine. She radiated displeasure, but it all bounced off Jo's sunny disposition. "You know, I really don't need this chair, I can walk fine on my own-"_

_Jo wagged a finger. "Now, now, you were told you need complete R n' R if you're going to get all better, so no walkies for you. 'Kay?" Her grin could've powered a million gigawatt light bulb. "I'll be right back. Don't you go anywhere, or I'll be all cross with you and get upset, and you wouldn't want that, would you? I might even cry!" _

_Bumblebee resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "I'll be good."_

_Jo skipped away without hyperbole. All she needed was a basket of rose petals to scatter as she went. _

_Bumblebee hunched down lower to wait. She was just planning her escape route over the wall (topped with barbwire, because this was Steel City and people broke into everything, everywhere and everyone), when the hairs prickled on the back of her neck and she realised she was being watched. _

_Never before had she felt so vulnerable. Not even when Johnny Rancid mangled her wings and cut off her on-foot escape route on his bike. She wished she had her Stingers and enough energy to use them, or, failing that, a big stick with a nail in the end. Her hand-to-hand was top notch but she was not, and the reality of where she was sank in as she realised any attempt on her life would also endanger a huge building full of people who couldn't hope to flee. _

_Bumblebee preferred using her fists. Violence was a language she understood well, but right now she decided words were more appropriate. "I know you're there._

_Speedy dropped from the branches above. _

_Bumblebee's relieved sigh could've uprooted an entire forest. "Asshole."_

"_Did I scare you?" The little smirk was so unexpected it was a good thing she was already sitting down, as it would've knocked her off her feet. He hadn't smirked like that – not at __**her**__ – in months. _

"_You wish," she retorted, slipping back into the pattern of bickering they'd established from Day One. It felt like an old glove, thought lost down the back of the sofa, only to turn up in the drum of the washing machine, bent out of shape but still recognisable. "Visiting hours ain't until later."_

"_I know."_

"_So why are you here?"_

_He shrugged. _

"_You can't have any of my lunch. This place is hella boring. I live for mealtimes."_

"_I know."_

_Oh. Yeah. He probably did._

"_Are the others here too?"_

"_No, just me."_

_Bumblebee sighed and determined she'd better say what needed saying while he was receptive enough to hear it. Still, she slid a curious look his way. He'd been so off with her since Cheshire. Coming alone to see her like this … it was bizarre. She felt like she'd stepped into the Twilight Zone. Very 'Who are you and what have you done with Speedy?' territory._

_Speedy didn't flinch when she spoke. He didn't react at all, just stood with hands on hips, surveying the view Jo was so insistent that Bumblebee enjoy. _

"_I never got to say thank you before."_

_Nothing. _

"_You know … for saving my bacon and all. So I just wanted to say it now. Uh," she floundered, "thanks. For saving my life. It meant - __**means**__ a lot to me." Laaaaaaaaaaaaame. George Lucas could write better dialogue. _

_Speedy still didn't react. Irritation stirred inside her. So she wasn't the best at mushy stuff. That didn't automatically demand rudeness._

"_A 'you're welcome' is usual."_

"_You're welcome." He aped her tone perfectly. _

"_Asshole."_

"_You went to see Cheshire."_

_Again, good to be sitting down. "Uh, yeah. I did. Didn't, uh, you?" _

"_No. I … didn't." It wasn't the word he wanted to use and they both knew it. 'I couldn't'. She didn't press him on it. _

"_Who told you I went?"_

"_Why did you do it?"_

"_Because I wanted – no, because I __**needed**__ to know why she did what she did. How do you know I went to see her?"_

_He nodded, but didn't look at her. "What did she say?"_

_Bumblebee sighed. "Cheshire didn't __**say**__ anything. I don't think she's capable of speech. She's had several psychological examinations since, and everything works fine physically, she just doesn't talk. At all. Understands everything and everyone, but never says a word. Personally, I think she's more than a few cards short of a full deck."_

"_So why did she do it?" It was such a blunt question it demanded an honest reply. _

"_I don't know."_

"_You're lying."_

"_No I'm not. I don't know. I just have suspicions."_

"_Which are?"_

"_Look, Sassafras, who told you I went to see Cheshire?"_

"_Answer the question first."_

_She narrowed her eyes at him, but wanted to keep the conversation going enough that she let it slide. This was the longest they'd talked in months, and despite the brusqueness and interrogation it felt … good. _

_She'd missed sparring with him, both verbally and physically, and she wasn't likely to get the second option anytime soon. Aqualad argued, but he was too straightforward in his responses. He didn't know __**how**__ to have a good, satisfying argument – the kind where you didn't care whether you won or not because you'd fought your corner so well. Aqualad was sensible, and arguing with Mas y Menos was like arguing with a bag of wet sand. _

"_I __**suspect**__, pending the final psychological enquiry, that Cheshire is emotionally stunted. Her emotional impulses are underdeveloped, while her physical knowledge is extensive but tends towards violence. That might suggest an abusive history – I don't know for sure – but she can't make a real connection between feelings and actions unless she's being violent. So for example, a situation that would normally call for a hug, she responds to by stabbing someone. Where you or I would pat someone n the back for a job well done, she'd kick them in the head. You know that saying 'violence is the only thing some criminals understand'? Well I think Cheshire takes that to a whole new level. It probably links in to control – she wants it, maybe needs it. Being the one to inflict pain on others gives you ultimate control of a situation. Who knows, perhaps she really __**did**__ like you. Perhaps you were her first crush or something, but instead of reacting to those feelings by writing you fan mail and putting your poster on her wall the way other fans do, she did the only thing she knew how – tried to connect with you by assuming control over you, and through the language of violence. Basically, she could just be a psychopathic fangirl."_

_Speedy finally swivelled his head to look at her. "Why didn't you tell me all this at the start?" he asked, smirk entirely gone now. _

"_Because I didn't think you wanted to hear it. You never want to talk about Cheshire, and I was only getting bits and pieces of info at a time from the psychiatrists. That's months of collated data and my own guesswork you just heard. Probably her doctors at the penitentiary have their own ideas on what made her so sick in the head. It's not normal for someone to clam up so tight the only way they can express themselves is through hurting others. She's had some kind of specialised combat training but it's like she's a ghost in the system – even at Interpol. Legally, she doesn't exist, so nobody can connect her behaviour to previous trauma and explain her away before they put her away."_

_Speedy looked at her for a long moment. _

"_What?" Bumblebee asked, feeling slightly uncomfortable. _

"_Nobody told me you went. I just saw your name on the record of visitors."_

"_Wait – you've been to see her?"_

"_Yoo-hoo Miss Beee-eee." Of all the lousy timing – Jo pranced past the fountain towards them. She actually had a wicker picnic basket under her arm. _

_Bumblebee wished she'd fall into the damn fountain. Speedy was already scaling the tree trunk and nocking an arrow with a jump-line to break out of the grounds and slide along to the office block outside. The ease with which he moved was frustrating, given her own immobility, but also gave her hope. He'd come through his injuries and could still move like that. The muscles in his legs shifted under his skin-tight bodysuit as he distributed his weight so firing the arrow didn't know him off his perch. _

"_I'm glad you went to see her," Bumblebee said hurriedly before he was gone. _

_He paused. "You think it means I'm getting better."_

"_Doesn't it?"_

"_I'm already better. Just worry about healing yourself." With that he left, sailing across the grounds like he had wings of his own. _

"_Miss Bee, was that a visitor I just saw?" Jo came up to her, breathless from her short dash. "You shouldn't be tiring yourself out like that! I don't know, these super-types, always rushing around and being mysterious, never keeping normal hours…"_

_Bumblebee let her get on with her prattle as she processed the conversation and wondered how much progress had been made in repairing her relationship with Speedy. _

* * *

Speedy was halfway through eating a banana when the dark circle blossomed in the wall. Raven stepped out, noticed him and nodded. She wasn't awkward in the least, which was so awkward for him he just kept on chewing because he couldn't think what else to do.

"Hey."

"Speedy."

"I thought we were all done with the checkups?"

"I'm not here for you."

The door slid open and Bumblebee seethed into the room. You didn't have to be an empath to see she was fuming, though the sight of Raven brought her up short. Anger drained from her face, but her bow lips tightened into a harder line as she realised what Raven was there for.

"Hey, Rae-girl."

"You're late."

"We had an appointment?"

"Every Thursday until I pronounce you fit enough not to need them anymore."

"Didn't your magic cure everything that needed curing already?" Bumblebee's voice had the barest edge of a whine to it.

Raven just looked at her in that way she did when someone was being irritating. It was remarkably like the look she also got when scraping stuff off her boot.

Speedy used to get that look a lot when he bitched at her, until he realised that no amount of bitching made Raven bat an eyelid. Raven was collected. Raven was unflappable. Raven was self-possessed to the point of chilliness with those who couldn't work their way under her skin. He'd never managed it, though she was less chilly now than she used to be. He guessed seeing someone from the inside out while healing them gave you a connection. Maybe.

He'd rarely seen Bumblebee browbeaten, but Raven's expression managed it.

Suddenly she noticed him there behind the other girl and her expression morphed back to anger, as if outraged he'd seen her moment of weakness. Like it really mattered anymore? You couldn't get much more vulnerable than on the bridge, and she didn't acknowledge that part.

How much did she even remember? he reflected, not for the first time. He still wasn't sure.

"Take a picture, Sassafras. It'll last longer." Bumblebee tossed back her head, every inch the offended but still proud leader. "C'mon, Rae-girl."

"My name is Raven."

"Whatever."

* * *

"_Don't you ever get tired of being the Titans only medic?"_

_Raven concentrated on her task (smoothing away the last vestiges of a scar on Bumblebee's forearm) before answering. "I'm not the __**only**__ medic."_

"_Well, no, but you're still the only everyone thinks of when someone gets hurt. When you heal stuff, it's like it was never there." Bumblebee flexed her fist. The tendons in her arm tightened and released, good as new. It was a good enough trade-off for the roiling nausea she always felt when Raven came by to heal her a bit more. She lay back in the hospital bed, sweating slightly. _

_A glass of water levitated off the bedside table._

"_I thought you'd be dead beat, too, after that. You couldn't just pass it normally?" Gratefully she accepted the drink. She could feel the cool liquid running to all the places in her head where it was needed – or at least that was what it felt like. _

"_I only heal physical injuries that way. I'm still working on making mental wounds disappear." _

_Bumblebee paused to cut a sidelong look at Raven. "Is that a dig at me for not seeing a counsellor?"_

"_You're very sensitive about that."_

"_I was just __**careless**__. I underestimated Johnny Rancid. It's all fixed now."_

"_But you're not."_

_Too many echoes of things she'd said herself. The Bumblebee of months earlier stood by the bedside, a third presence in the room who wagged her finger and babbled on about waking nightmares and mental health. The word 'hypocrite' featured heavily. _

_Bumblebee scrunched up her face and levered herself into a sitting position. Her wings had been mangled in the wheels of Johnny's bike. It was why she hadn't been able to fly away when he brought out the chain and swiped at her as he roared past. He snapped three of her ribs doing that, as well as fracturing her shoulder. _

_Raven watched with her hands in her lap. You could almost ignore the way she hovered six inches above her chair. "Post-traumatic stress isn't something you should underestimate."_

"_I'm not a basket case," Bumblebee insisted. "I took a chance because he threatened an innocent bystander, and I didn't pull it off enough to save that girl __**and**__ myself. It was just a series of unfortunate events." She winced. "That phrase ain't never gonna be useable again, is it?" _

_Raven didn't respond._

_Bumblebee frowned. "You're telling me you've never been a victim of your own bad timing?"_

"_My bad timing never gave me multiple fractures."_

"_Is this gonna turn into a thing? Because it sounds like this is gonna turn into a thing." _

"_And a thing would be bad?"_

"_Especially if my boys got hold of it."_

"_**Your**__ boys?"_

_Damn. She must be more tired than she thought. That'd never slipped out before. Bumblebee sank back, groaning. "You can't tell them I said that. They'd never let me forget it."_

_Raven nodded, not judgemental, though the suspicion of a smile played about the corners of her mouth. "You're really protective of them, aren't you?"_

"_You're not about your teammates?"_

"_Touché." Raven would put the biggest hurt in the world on anyone who touched Robin, Beast Boy, Starfire or Cyborg. And Terra, while she was around, though Raven didn't admit it and nobody talked about it. Everyone still knew, though. Bumblebee had heard how sometimes Raven was spotted reading a book in an uncomfortable tree outside a certain school in Jump City – in __**daylight**_

_Bumblebee sighed. "Half the time I wonder how good I am at protecting them, though. A leader's supposed to take care of her team, but if I was half the leader Robin is, Speedy wouldn't have a metal hand and enough psychological scarring to fill a textbook." She could talk openly with Raven. Raven had been inside Speedy's head. _

"_Robin isn't perfect." No platitudes. No clichés. That wouldn't be Raven. _

"_Closer than I am."_

_The snort took her by surprise. "You have absolutely no idea," Raven said, but would add no more. Instead she started work on the broken fingers of Bumblebee's left hand. _

"_Rae-girl," Bumblebee said after a while, "if you'd been there … if things hadn't been so rushed that night, and we'd radioed it in to you sooner instead of sending word when we were already at the hospital … d'you think your powers … could you have saved Speedy's hand?"_

_Raven paused in her ministrations. "It isn't good to think about what-ifs and might-have-beens."_

"_But could you?"_

"_I don't know. Maybe."_

_Bumblebee went quiet for a moment, but spoke again when Raven resumed working. "Is it really bad inside his head?"_

"_I haven't seen inside Speedy's head for a while."_

"_Okay, __**was**__ it really bad?"_

"_Do you want me to sugar-coat the answer?"_

_That in itself was all Bumblebee needed to hear. She lapsed into thoughtful silence for the rest of Raven's visit. _

* * *

_To Be Continued…_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

_**She tapped her foot and winced, the morning's kata having left her muscles fatigued.**_

-- Kata (型 or 形, _literally: "form"_?) is a Japanese word describing detailed choreographed patterns of movements practiced either solo or in pairs. Kata are used in many traditional Japanese arts such as theater forms like _kabuki_ and schools of tea ceremony (_chadō_), but are most commonly known for the presence in the martial arts. Kata are used by most traditional Japanese and Okinawan martial arts, such as _aikidō_, _iaidō_, _jōdō_, _jūdō_, _jūjutsu_, _kendō_ and _karatedō_. Other arts such as t'ai chi ch'uan and taekwondo feature the same kind of training, but use the respective Chinese and Korean words instead (info courtesy of Wikipedia).

"_**I just wanted to talk. Was that so freaking difficult? But no, you have to get all up in my face with your emotional constipation."**_

-- A riff of a line in Disney's _Tarzan_.

_**Well, this sucked more than industrial vacuum cleaner. **_

-- Side-fling to _Red Dwarf_.

_**The plate on the side said it was Persephone, and Bumblebee remembered enough of that myth to laugh. Yup, on its best day Steel City was still only a few steps ahead of Hades.**_

-- (From the 1911 edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica) "As she [Persephone, daughter of the Earth goddess Demeter was gathering flowers with her playmates in a meadow, the earth opened and Pluto, god of the dead [sometimes also known as Hades, appeared and carried her off to be his queen in the world below ... Torch in hand, her sorrowing mother sought her through the wide world, and finding her not she forbade the earth to put forth its increase. So all that year not a blade of corn grew on the earth, and men would have died of hunger if Zeus had not persuaded Pluto to let Persephone go. But before he let her go Pluto made her eat the seed of a pomegranate, and thus she could not stay away from him for ever. So it was arranged that she should spend two-thirds (according to later authors, one-half) of every year with her mother and the heavenly gods, and should pass the rest of the year with Pluto beneath the earth. ... As wife of Pluto, she sent spectres, ruled the ghosts, and carried into effect the curses of men." The statue in the hospital grounds depicts Persephone running away from Hades through the meadow before he first captures her.

_**Bumblebee's relieved sigh could've uprooted an entire forest.**_

-- Boosted from _Rachel's Holiday_ by Marian Keyes.

"_**It's like she's a ghost in the system – even at Interpol."**_

-- The International Criminal Police Organization is an organisation that facilitates international police cooperation. It should not be confused with the International Police, which takes on an active uniformed role in policing war-torn countries.

"_**That phrase ain't never gonna be useable again, is it?"**_

-- Side-fling to both Lemony Snicket and _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_.


	5. I Know I Can't Be Free

_There's no way out of this dark place,  
No hope, no future.  
I know I can't be free,  
But I can't see another way.  
I can't face another day.  
_

-- From _No Way Out_ by Phil Collins.

* * *

**5. I Know I Can't Be Free**

_

* * *

_

The parallels between her recovery and Speedy's were like a slap in the face with a freight train. Even Bumblebee's fantastic ability to bury herself in her work couldn't dislodge them. That didn't mean she didn't try, of course. Titans East's paperwork had never been so up to date, and suddenly they had a bathroom instead of a pile of grime with a toilet. Floors sparkled, reports were filed practically before the bad guys were in cuffs, and for once she actually had time to thread her eyebrows.

Of course she hated it.

"Can I have my Stingers back now?"

"What did Raven say?" Aqualad asked.

"That I'm back to normal."

"Dream on."

"What?"

"You're a terrible liar."

"You're not the boss of me, Water-Boy!"

"I am until Raven herself tells me you're fit for active duty."

"She's not the only medic in all the Titans, y'know."

"But she's the one I trust most with your health."

"This is female oppression! I'm being oppressed. Where's a Suffragette when you need one?" Bumblebee stuck out her tongue and went to scrub grime from between the bathroom floor tiles. "And I'm using your toothbrush to do it!"

* * *

_Speedy ran faster than he'd ever run before. He hopped from moving car-roof to car-roof; he shot grapple-arrows to unsecured spots; he ignored safety protocol and barrelled across town towards the bridge. _

"_Stupid bitch." The mutter became a mantra. "Stupid bitch. Stupid bitch. Stupid, stupid Bumblebitch."_

_The police scanners were humming with the news, but no squad cars could get through because of the gridlock. It was Traffic City the closer he got to the scene. Overhead came the thrum of a helicopter, but there was nowhere they could land and they wouldn't send in ordinary cops against Rancid's arsenal. He'd outfitted himself since his last tangle with the authorities. Anyone getting close was dicing with death in a very real way._

"_Code T, Code T, we have a Teen Titan down on the bridge. Repeat, Teen Titan on the bridge. Titan is down and civilians are in line of fire. Requesting all available officers to the scene…"_

_Blue uniforms darted between cars, guns drawn. Speedy wondered how many rules they were breaking by rushing to Bumblebee's aid – because it was Bumblebee who was down. _

_He just hoped she wasn't out. _

_And suddenly he wished he hadn't frozen her out so much. She wasn't responsible for what went on in his head, but he'd still punished her for it. She overcompensated and had tried to turn him back into Roy when all he wanted (needed!) was to be Speedy, but she wasn't Cheshire. She hadn't cut off his hand and stuck him with a new one. She didn't tie him to that chair so tight the arms turned red where his wrists had bled. She didn't make him wake up in a cold sweat, or force him to beat the hell (and stuffing) out of punchbags. She'd just been looking out for him in the worst way possible. _

_Which included going up against an opponent it'd taken __**all**__ Robin's Titans to capture, just so he, Speedy, wouldn't be called on fight the big guns. _

"… _Stupid Bumblebitch…"_

_He kept saying it as he burst onto the scene, as he vaulted and balanced on the bazooka, as his boots made contact with Rancid's head. He said it as he landed a punch that broke three of Rancid's ribs and hurdled the spiked mace about to turn his own chest into Swiss cheese. He said it as he stood over the crumpled bundle of blood and yellow-black stripes and shot arrow after arrow after arrow. When the smoke cleared and Rancid was on the floor Speedy shifted to stand over him instead, grabbing the bigger man's wrist and snapping it cleanly with his metal hand. No more grip meant no more bazooka, and no more bazooka meant no more threat to bystanders. _

"… _Stupid Bumblebitch…"_

_Rancid groaned, reaching for his dropped flail._

_Speedy nocked another arrow, bowstring straining in the fine drizzle that had started, but which he hadn't even noticed until his fingers started to slip. "Think you're hard, huh? Think it makes you a tough guy to beat up a girl? Do you? __**Do you?**__" The fury in his voice surprised even himself. It bubbled up from his intestines, bursting into his throat, acidic and bilious. _

"_Please," Rancid begged. "No more…"_

"_Speedy!" one of the boys in blue shouted over the pounding in his ears. "Stop! He's had enough!"_

_It wasn't enough. It wouldn't ever be enough; not as long as people like Rancid were on the street and could hurt people. Speedy wanted to draw his elbow back a bit further and just … let that last arrow fly. He had enough power in his new hand. One bolt, that was it. One bolt through the heart, quick and simple. His ribcage would probably burst apart completely at this close range. Nobody would miss the guy. He was scum. Who mourned scum? Just a few seconds and he could end it all, and nobody would ever be hurt this way again -_

_Speedy realised what he was doing and dropped his arms. The bow and arrow clattered to the concrete at his feet. _

_Cops swarmed over Rancid. Somewhere in the distance an ambulance wailed, unable to get through the same as the cop cars. _

"_Speedy!"_

"_Huh?" He looked up at the hand on his shoulder. "What?"_

"_You okay, kid?" The police officer was grizzled, probably close to retirement, though that could be upwards of thirty in Steel City. Steel aged you. Things happened in Steel that made you harder than in other cities. Even New Yorkers were fluffy bunnies compared to genuine, dyed-in-the-wool Steelites._

"_What?"_

"_For a second there I actually though you were gonna kill him." The officer shook his head like the idea was ridiculous. "So did he, by the looks of things. He peed his pants. Some tough guy."_

_Speedy snapped to attention. "Bumblebitch!" He whirled to see cops attending her, large, square hands turning her over and making sure her tongue wasn't blocking her throat. Her face was a mess of gore and her wings hung half off her back, the gossamer shredded and insectoid veins sticking out like tree branches in Winter…_

_His hand and her wings – the two things that they used to make themselves different than regular teenagers. The parallels were too gruesome. _

"_Get away from her!" He rushed over and knelt by her side. "You can't move her or you might paralyse her." They were all being too rough. He avoided touching her wings at all, but there didn't seem one bit of her free from blood. Was this what he looked like when they found __**him**__? No wonder everyone was so weird afterwards. It was awful. "Bumblebitch!"_

_Her eyelids flickered, but her breathing was shallow and wet, like her lungs were filling with fluid. When he felt her pulse it was arrhythmic and faint._

"_Don't die!" The words were out before his conscious brain caught up. _

"_Fnuh…" Not agreement, but better than nothing. She always was bad at taking orders instead of giving them._

"_Don't you freakin' die!"_

_

* * *

_

It was Aqualad's fault. If he hadn't forced her to stay behind, she wouldn't have been the one to field the phone call from the holding facility where they'd put all the recaptured villains.

It struck Bumblebee as really dumb to put them all in one place, even the ones recaptured by other fledgling Titans groups outside both Jump City _and_ Steel. She had no doubt over the competence of Titans South or North, even if the mix of personalities of Pantha's Titans just appealed to her more than Bushido's. They'd rounded up so many outstanding warrants and given so much good advice based on their various experiences in the field. Still, the authorities wouldn't listen. It also struck her how people in power were inevitably really, really dumb, and whether that meant, inversely, that those in the lowest jobs were super-intelligent. Perhaps countries should be run by sewer workers and garbage men.

When the guys came home from patrol she was sitting quietly but not peacefully in the communications room. She thrummed with a nervous, uneven energy that made her wings twitch. Fixing her wings was the most complicated piece of healing Raven had ever performed, and they still weren't ready to take her weight yet, but they were a perfect litmus test for her mood.

"What's wrong?" Aqualad asked the moment he walked in. He was caked in dirt and smelled like a compost heap, and there was what looked like toilet paper in his hair. Still, he'd dutifully come to report to her first – unlike Speedy, whose devotion to his appearance always drove him to clean up before making his reports.

For once, however, she was glad she came second to his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

"What happened?" Aqualad persisted.

Bumblebee didn't mince her words. "Cheshire's pregnant."

"What?" Raw shock gave way to dismay, as the implications of this ghosted across his face. "Oh, man…"

"Apparently after they ran the tests to confirm, she spoke for the first time. Ever."

"What did she say?"

"She said, 'I knew he was the right choice.' Nothing else. Not even when they asked what she meant by that."

"Oh, _man_…"

"I know." Bumblebee dropped her eyes. "How the heck am I meant to tell Speedy?"

"You don't need to," said a voice from the doorway.

They both snapped around.

"I thought you went to shower off," said Aqualad.

Speedy, covered in gunge from a fight in the sewers, had his arms folded and his jaw perfectly level. "I'd say it's a good thing I didn't. This way neither of you has to worry about how to break it to me."

Bumblebee got up from her chair. "Sassafras-"

"Fuck off, Bumblebitch. Just …" He paused, as if searching for the right words. "Just fuck off." With that, he turned on his heel and bolted.

* * *

"_Babycakes!" Rancid's grin was like a puppy's leash wrapped around a tree. "You sure look prettier than the last time I saw you."_

_Considering she was comatose on the pavement, leaking blood at the time, that wasn't difficult. Her joints still twanged and her chest rumbled sometimes when she breathed out, but Bumblebee counted herself among Raven's best work. _

"_Don't call me that." The order snapped out before she could properly think it through and she cursed herself for so quickly giving him a weapon to use against her. _

_Rancid just grinned more. "Why'd you come all the way to see me, babe? I don't get many visitors – 'cept for those psych dudes with their clipboards. Bunch of loser dweebs. Ain't nobody in the world can crack the code that is Johnny Rancid. He's one of a kind. He's unique. He's an enigma, wrapped inside a mystery, wrapped inside a riddle-"_

"_Locked inside a jail cell," she finished, narrowing her eyes. "Can it, bigmouth."_

"_Feisty. I like that in a woman. You could use fewer layers, though." He gestured lazily at her clothes._

_Bumblebee stood firm against the desire to punch him. News had travelled of her last visit to a known felon, and this time there was a guard present to make sure she didn't try anything violent. Two, in fact, as beefy as Rancid and impassive as the guards outside Buckingham Palace. _

_Rancid's eyes were hooded and she didn't care for the expression behind them. He was covered in bandages that evidenced the severe beating he'd taken. The police had already informed her of how Speedy took him out when it looked like __**she**__ was about to check out for good, but she hadn't realised the extent of Speedy's handiwork until now. Even being told she would have to visit Rancid in the penitentiary hospital hadn't clued her in to __**how**__ bad his injuries were – and he didn't have someone like Raven to heal him. _

"_How come you're not looking as bad as Johnny, babycakes?"_

"_The universe rewards good guys. You didn't have enough good karma for the same treatment."_

"_I gotta get me some better insurance. So why you come to see the Rance-Meister? You wanna be my moll or something? You gonna kiss my boo-boos all better?" he leered. _

_Up close and without his bike, Johnny Rancid wasn't nearly as impressive. He was just another pale guy with a mullet who liked motorcycles because he couldn't get girls interested in him. If he hadn't chosen a career as a villain he'd probably still be living in his parents' basement. _

_She found grim pleasure in telling him this, which was really un-heroic, but so what? This guy ticked her off just by existing. He was another disenfranchised bad boy whose only reason for living was to make life harder for everyone else. His track record was much more striking than Cheshire's (during his first encounter with Titans West he literally redesigned reality to suit his whims), but unlike during her interview with Cheshire, now Bumblebee felt more outraged than horrified._

_**This**__ was the guy who nearly killed her? __**This**__ was the guy who sent Speedy so close to the edge? He was Generic Biker Dude! The police should've been able to handle him on their own. Instead, here she was, weeks after the fact, only just getting back on her feet._

"_You make me sick."_

"_You make a special trip to tell me that, sugar-lips?" He blew kisses at her. "Oh yeah, you're hot for me. Chicks are always into that kinda shit. Rough 'em up a little, knock 'em around, and they always come crawling back for more."_

"_Hey! No bad language in front of the lady," said one of the guards. He looked at Bumblebee with something like pity because she still had to use a crutch when she got tired and carried it with her just in case. _

_Right then she wasn't sure which man she wanted to hit more. _

_Johnny Rancid had done more than just hurt her. He'd made her feel like a child again: powerless, hopeless, foolish. On the bridge, unable to see and injured so badly she could barely suck in air, she had honestly thought she was going to die. The fear that struck her then was embarrassing. She'd always thought she would face death like she faced life – head-on and wielding her Stingers. Instead she'd been reduced to a croaking, pathetic thing that bore no resemblance to the fighter she'd become since her last night in Chicory and her last day in HIVE Academy. Johnny Rancid had taken away her dignity, and though she was almost completely recovered, she would always hate him for that. The last person to take her dignity was Brother Blood when he used his mental powers to block the grieving process and turn her and her friends into puppet villains to populate his school. _

_To her great dismay, a tear trickled from the corner of her eye. _

_She'd intended to interrogate Rancid on who released him from his frozen state, and use the opportunity to reclaim some of the dignity he took away. After all, she was already back on her feet, while he may never be able to ride his beloved motorcycle again. It was a much better punishment than simple jail time. _

_Rancid gave a throaty chuckle. He obviously enjoyed rattling her. "Look at her, getting all weepy. You really got it bad for me, huh, babycakes?"_

_Momma always called her babycakes…_

"_Don't. Call. Me. That."_

"_You don't like me calling you babycakes? Sure thing, babycakes. I won't call you babycakes no more. Is that what you want, babycakes? Is it?" His voice rose as if it were seeking the vulnerable, thin places in her soul to pour in his poison and let it rot her from the inside out._

_More tears slid down Bumblebee's cheeks. She wiped them away with quick, aggressive movements and decided it was time to go. She could interview him later. On paper. While he wore a muzzle. _

"_See you later, babycakes! Maybe we could have another go around, know what I mean? Your guy interrupted us last time, but we're pretty private here and I'm sure these guys wouldn't mind watching. When you want a real man to squeeze your tits, you let me know, 'kay babycakes?"_

_She whirled, but the guards had moved to close the gap as if protecting Rancid from her wrath. _

* * *

In Cheshire's world, all that mattered was being the best fighter. She used to be the best – trained practically since birth in the lexicon of combat. Master Weng Chan took the scrappy but talented little orphan with no name, whom he found on the street, and turned her into something tremendous. He saw the potential in her and nurtured it more than her own mother ever could've.

When she was three she learned how to tumble and kick at a ninety degree angle. When she was five she could snatch insects out the air without damaging their wings. When she was six she graduated to small birds. Every time she caught one she would spend a moment in quiet contemplation of its life, then break its neck with her thumb. Always just the thumb. More than that was inefficient. Master Chan didn't care for killing things, so she hid the bodies from him, but she couldn't give up the feeling of power she got when taking these small lives.

Master Chan entered her for martial arts contests. She brought home lots of money that kept them comfortably, but she was dissatisfied and too young to articulate why.

When she seven she killed a man. She used a sewing needle. There was blood when it punctured his jugular and flew out the other side of his neck, but she was in the rafters so the red splash seemed no bigger than what dribbled out of her previous victims. Kruen Musenda, one of Master Chan's friends from the martial arts circuit, had recognised her bloodlust and asked her to take care of this man for him. She didn't care why, just about the suffusion of power the act brought. Taking small lives brought a small buzz that grew thinner every time. Musenda gave her both permission and an excuse to test her skills in ways Master Chan never intended.

When she came home one day to find Musenda sitting by Master Chan's body, she supposed he expected her to react badly. His stance said he was prepared to fight her, to beat her into submission, but she simply stood in the doorway and nodded her agreement. Master Chan had nothing left to teach her – nothing that she wanted to know. If Musenda was surprised by her coldness then he gave no sign, but took her under his wing and taught her the ways of his own profession.

When she was ten she knew enough hand-to-hand to take on fighters twice her size and beat them. She was a child prodigy. Everyone said so. When she was thirteen Musenda presented her with her knives and mask as a rite of passage. He also gave her the title she now went by, based on the strange way she painted her mask. Newly renamed, she went with him to assassinate whomsoever they'd been paid to kill.

When she was fifteen she enacted her own rite of passage. She cut off Musenda's hands in combat and drove a shard of broken nose into his brain. It was a good way of proving he had nothing left to teach her.

She regretted coming to America. Here, she'd been recruited by the best fighter of the land – Brain fought in a different arena than her own, but she respected him. He gave her many new enemies to test her skills against.

He also set the stage for her defeat.

Those who weren't the best died. That was the way of the world. So when she was reawakened from her frozen sleep by the man in the two-tone mask, she expected him to kill her and mark her death on his wall, the same way she'd marked all her own kills. Instead he released her into the world, lost and without purpose now her supremacy was over.

She wandered, loathe to do as tradition demanded and end her own life. She was a child prodigy. She reinvented the old ways to suit her. She did things her own way.

She'd lost her title to so many at once, she supposed she could track down each Teen Titan who had fought in the final battle against the Brotherhood and make them pay, so she could reassert her claim … but then she broke into a smallholding near to where she'd been released, looking for food and a warm bed, and found a young mother trying to protect her baby against an impossible threat.

And Cheshire was inspired.

She dangled the cold little body in front of her, feeling its weight and repositioning it in the crook of her arm, practising. If she could no longer be the best herself, then she would make another one and train it better, create someone who could surpass all comers, defeat the Titans and become the best fighter of them all. she had lost her own title. Reclaiming it would never be as sweet as it was sour – it was tainted for her, but she could bask in the reflected glory of her own little champion. She would devote herself to her new task. Only then would she bow to tradition, when she had nothing left to teach and her little one had to prove itself over her.

Perfect.

So she did as she always did and researched her prey. She selected and discarded ideas, lining up potential candidates in her mind. To produce a champion she needed a good source of genes to match her own, and the irony of producing the Titans' ultimate defeat from among them appealed. She catalogued who had been there at the Brotherhood's defeat, rejecting the inaccessible or inappropriate. She favoured those who relied on their own skills. Magic and technology were unfair advantages that either couldn't be passed on, or required more than just her parenting skills. Nobody else would get to train her champion – that was her honour and hers alone.

Eventually she came down to two candidates – the one called Robin and his almost-twin, Speedy.

Guards from the cryogenic penal complex came to the smallholding. She killed them all, but knew there would be others. Her time was short. Steel City was closer than Jump City. The deciding factor was as simple as that. So, decision made, she set off, forming more intricate plans as she went. She was a child prodigy, after all. Her brain knew how to slide around deception and trickery without lancing them and letting their poison out.

In the end she approved of Speedy. He fought her at every turn. Injured and in pain, he still never let her smash his spirit. Once, he even nearly broke free. The ensuing scuffle broke an ear off her mask. Nobody before him ever got close enough to do that. Maybe Robin was the better strategist (Robin wouldn't have been fooled by her damsel-in-distress routine, she was certain), but she'd had fun with her power over Speedy. If the Titans East had not interrupted, she might have killed him beautifully – except that privilege was reserved for her little one.

Now she sat in her cell, stroking her belly and shushing the movement within. She never spoke to anyone but her child, since its training had already begun. For the time being, the care these idiots gave her was good. Let them help her birth her champion. She would break out of this place afterwards and take her baby with her, whether they tried to remove it from her or not. It didn't pay to underestimate Cheshire.

"First you must kill the people Mummy tells you to, because Mummy will pick only the best opponents and that will make you grow stronger," she murmured in a mix of Vietnamese, Russian, Zhang-Zhung, Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Hebrew. It was the only way to make sure those watching her didn't learn lessons meant only for her baby.

She loved irony – a jolly painted smile as a man lay dying, using the teacher as a final test; psychologists thinking she was simple because of her lack of speech when she knew more tongues than the most accomplished linguist. To them, she was just babbling nonsense right now. To them, she was just a vacant girl with sallow skin and no personality without her mask.

How wrong they were.

"Then you must kill Mummy, because Mummy was defeated by the Titans, so Mummy isn't as strong as them. Then you must kill Daddy and the Teen Titans, because they're the best, and it's only by killing the best that you can take their place and become the best yourself." Cheshire smiled a secret smile. "And you're going to be the best in the world, my little Lian…"

* * *

_To Be Concluded…_

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

"_**This is female oppression! I'm being oppressed. Where's a Suffragette when you need one?"**_

-- The title of Suffragette was given to members of the women's suffrage movement, originally in the United Kingdom. The term comes from the word suffrage, which means the right to vote. The word was originally coined to describe a more radical faction of the suffrage movement in the UK, mainly members of the Women's Social and Political Union, headed by Emmeline Pankhurst. Mrs. Banks in _Mary Poppins_ is a Suffragette.

_**Rancid groaned, reaching for his dropped flail.**_

-- The flail is a medieval weapon made of one (or more) weights attached to a handle with a hinge or chain. There is some disagreement over the right way to name it, and the terms 'morning star' is also used. Some people even try calling it a mace, but personally my rule of thumb is that a mace is a weight attached to a stick for hitting things with (Johnny Rancid's mace is a large spiked ball set on top of a stick-handle), while a flail is a mace with a chain between the weight and the handle, used for extra momentum. For pictures to better explain this check out **en . wikipedia . org / wiki / Flail (weapon).**

"_**So why you come to see the Rance-Meister? You wanna be my moll or something?"**_

-- 'Moll' is short for 'gun moll', a female companion of male professional criminals, and in some contexts the term more specifically suggests that the gun moll handles a firearm. When the term arose in the first decade of the 20th century the 'gun' part actually came from the Yiddish word for 'thief' (variously transliterated into English as ganef, gonif, goniff, or ganof), not from 'gun' in the sense of a firearm. Eventually, however, with stories like that of Bonnie Parker (of Bonnie and Clyde) and Blanche Barrow the gun part became a more literal description of what these ladies got up to in their line of work. The 'moll' part of the title, however, derives from _Molly_, a diminutive of _Mary_, used as a euphemism for _whore_ or _prostitute_.

_**In Cheshire's world, all that mattered was being the best fighter. She used to be the best – trained practically since birth in the lexicon of combat. Master Weng Chan took the scrappy little orphan with no name, whom he found on the street, and turned her into something tremendous. **_

-- Cheshire's entire history is taken from the basis of comic canon, but has a few major changes, just like the canonical cast of the show had a few major changes to their back-stories to fit into this new universe. Please don't tell me how I've 'got it all wrong', as people have been wont to do in the past when I've done this with other characters.

_**She murmured in a mix of Vietnamese, Russian, **__**Zhang-Zhung,**__**Vedic Sanskrit and Ancient Hebrew.**_

-- Vedic Sanskrit is an ancient Indian language, the language of the _Vedas_, the oldest shruti texts of Hinduism. It is an archaic form of Sanskrit, an early descendant of Proto-Indo-Iranian, used during between roughly 1000 BC and 600 BC. Zhang-Zhung is an extinct Sino-Tibetan language that was spoken in western Tibet and Central Asia from about the 7th to 10th Centuries AD.

* * *


	6. Daylight Finds You

_There will be times on this journey when  
All you'll see is darkness,  
But out there somewhere  
Daylight finds you  
If you keep believing._

_All the things that you can change,  
There's a meaning in everything,  
And you will find all you need,  
There's so much to understand –_

_Take a look through my eyes,  
There's a better place somewhere out there.  
Just take a look through my eyes,  
Everything changes,  
You'll be amazed what you'll find  
If you look through my eyes._

-- From _Look Through My Eyes _by Phil Collins.

_

* * *

_

**6. Daylight Finds You**

_

* * *

_

"_You sure you can handle leading your own team?"_

_Pantha didn't even hesitate. She punched a fist into the palm of her other hand and smiled fiercely into her communicator. "Believe me, Titans South will rise to supremacy as the champions of all Titans teams."_

_Bumblebee couldn't help a small smile etching her lips. She liked Pantha. She was brutish and coarse, but she was also competent and didn't take crap from anybody. Plus she was too capable __**not **__to__be taken seriously, as she'd proven in the fight against the Brotherhood. _

"_It's not a contest, you know."_

"_As you say. But Titans South will still be champions."_

"_Only if you can beat Titans East, girlfriend."_

_For a moment Pantha looked confused, until she realised what Bumblebee meant by the term. Her expression cleared and she wagged one clawed finger. "Shall we make a small wager on that?"_

"_Pass. I'm no gambler."_

"_Oh, but just a small challenge of the odds makes victory all the sweeter," Pantha said, her sporting background showing through. Bumblebee wondered how many times, when the odds were against her, Pantha had made her own 'small wager' on herself and raked in the cash because of it. _

"_Still pass."_

"_You are afraid your teammates cannot succeed while you are on the bench?"_

"_Nothing of the sort. My boys can handle themselves. They're pros at this game." Except it wasn't a game, which was why they were pros at it – because they knew that. Pantha would learn the same, in time. Bumblebee just hoped neither she nor her team would have to go through the hardships Titans East had faced in order to learn that particular lesson._

"_**Your**__ boys?" One side of Pantha's mask twitched._

_Damn. _

"_Yeah," Bumblebee said, tipped her chin up. You couldn't back down against Pantha. You had to stand your ground or she'd see it as admission of defeat and never let you forget it. Bumblebee was still recovering from when she let her use the bathroom first when everyone went back to Titans Tower after beating the Brotherhood. "__**My**__ boys."_

"_I am hoping that, someday, I will be as defensive of my own team as you are of yours. You are like the mother jaguar defending her cubs."_

"_Uh … yeah." Bumblebee didn't know what to say to that. "So, your Tower's all built and ready for action now?"_

"_As soon as Argent returns from London, we shall truly be ready for action in the fight against evil."_

"_And you're okay about giving up your career for this?"_

_Pantha shrugged. "I had maybe a few years left in the ring. I would rather put my skills to better use than merely the pursuit of money. Besides which, Starfire convinced Red Star to join Titans South and he has a pretty mouth. There are not many men who could stand up to Pantha, and I like a challenge." She smiled roguishly. _

"_Girl!"_

_Pantha's laugh was deep and fruity. "You are surprised, when you and Speedy are such a pair?"_

_Bumblebee choked. "What?" She was glad she was alone in the Tower. _

"_Yourself and Speedy are an item, no?"_

"_No!"_

"_Oh. But I was told-"_

"_I don't care what you were told. Sassafras and I are __**not**__, nor ever will be, an item."_

* * *

"Sassafras!" Bumblebee raced after where she thought Speedy had gone, Aqualad hot on her heels. This was the worst thing on top of an even worse thing. Why the hell hadn't she checked the door was shut before speaking?

"Why didn't they tell us sooner?" Aqualad demanded. "She has to be close to full term by now."

"The same reason they never tell us anything," Bumblebee replied. "They think we're just a bunch of kids."

"But something like this, something that directly affects one of us…"

One of us. Yes, it was like the news had affected them as much as Speedy. The Titans were all connected; when one hurt, they all hurt. Right now it felt like Bumblebee's heart was going to crack open her ribcage from the inside and crawl out into the world, looking for a less excruciating place to rest. Her breath caught in her throat and phantom injuries materialised all over her body.

Tamping down on the sensations, she leaned against a wall to set her head straight.

"Where _is_ he?" Aqualad wanted to know. "He can't have just vanished."

"You check the floor below, I'll check above. If you see Mas y Menos…" Bumblebee trailed off.

They should tell them. They should. All Titans were connected – but they'd already protected the twins from the worst of what happened to Speedy. Maybe Mas and Menos knew what an STD was. Maybe they'd understood much more than they let on. However, Bumblebee was their leader, even if she hadn't been in the field for a while, which meant she was responsible for _all_ aspects of their wellbeing, and they were only kids.

Aqualad looked at her. "Send them out on an errand?"

"Just tell them not to talk to Speedy for a while, but to let us know where he is if they spot him."

"They're going to ask questions."

"I know, I know, I'll deal with it later. Right now I'm more concerned about finding that big lunkhead before he does something stupid."

Aqualad nodded grimly.

It was discouraging that he didn't argue against the idea.

_

* * *

_

_Aqualad and Mas y Menos arrived at the hospital at the same time, which was pretty amazing when you thought about it._

"_Where is she?"_

"_¿Dónde está ella?"_

_Speedy explained everything with no more than minor omissions, but they were all too frantic to notice. They insisted on seeing Bumblebee, then realised that was a stupid idea, then argued with each other over who came up with such a dumb thought, and __**then**__ raged around the waiting room, intimidating other people with their worry and anger. _

_Mas y Menos got extra zippy when they were mad but Aqualad just got very, very quiet. He seemed to cave in on himself, folding his arms and shutting his eyes like he was wrestling back some enormous internal force with both hands and a cattle prod. Which, considering he was aquakinetic, seemed close to the mark. Speedy had only seen it a few times, but when Aqualad cut loose he really __**cut loose**__. It was at times like this Speedy remembered the human body was something like 80 percent water. _

_After a few minutes of trading silences Aqualad opened his eyes. "Words do not begin to describe how much I want to get my hands on Johnny Rancid right now."_

_Internally, Speedy winced. It was all still too fresh in his head. "Don't worry. I took care of it."_

_That gave Aqualad pause. "You did?" An uncertain note crept into his voice, curving up the end the angry monotone. _

"_I didn't kill the guy, if that's what you're worried about."_

"_I wasn't."_

_Liar. But Speedy couldn't bring himself to argue more because only a heartbeat had stood between himself and the other side on that bridge. He'd come so close to losing control; to doing what all Titans – all heroes – swore never to do … _

_A tight fist of terror still nestled in his gut, and he couldn't identify if he was more scared for Bumblebee or himself. _

_Aqualad pushed hair from his face. "I never thought we'd be back here so soon, especially not with the thought that we might be so close to losing someone again."_

_Mas y Menos blew past wielding Spanish words you wouldn't find in the average phrasebook. Aqualad deftly steered them outside with the order to run off some energy, since the porters looked ready to throw them all out if they carried on._

"_I hope you guys put on such a great performance when it was me in this place," Speedy said. _

"_Are you kidding? Calming those two down is nothing. Last time Mas and Menos went into shock and acted like little zombies. Bumblebee was way worse. This is easy in comparison." Aqualad made sure everyone was clear and then spun the revolving door so fast Mas and Menos, on their way in at an even greater speed than before, were catapulted back outside. _

"_Honestly?" Speedy was shocked. Then he wondered why. Bumblebitch had been on his back ever since he woke up in this damn hospital, what seemed like a lifetime ago. It stood to reason she'd been just as overassertive before he woke up. He wasn't sure how he was meant to react to that now, with her blood on his clothes and the memory of a taut bowstring burning in his mind. _

"_Dude, despite what you might think, she cares about you. She cares about all of us. She's been tearing herself apart since the day you went missing, blaming herself and trying to … to fix you, I guess. She takes the leader thing really seriously, even though sometimes her aim's a little off. Like when she grabbed a random nurse by the collar, shoved him up against the wall and told him she'd Sting his unmentionables off if he didn't convince the doctors to let you keep your hand."_

_Unthinkingly, Speedy looked at his left glove. It was sodden, stained with blood and dirt, but he hadn't taken it off like the other one. "She did that?"_

"_Among other things."_

"_I never knew."_

"_Yeah, well, you know as well as I do that she's also stupidly proud. That's why she went out on her own tonight. She thought she could handle Rancid alone and didn't want to call you as back-up in case you got hurt." Aqualad's posture slumped. "I hate irony."_

"_Yeah." Speedy clenched his fist. Under the glove's dry plush to cushion the noise, his fingers clicked like typewriter keys. "Me too."_

_

* * *

_

Bumblebee knew she'd found him by the crackle of tension in the air. She didn't throw open the stairwell door for fear he was poised on the edge of the roof – which he was. His toes were already over the edge, though his heels tipped back over the concrete rim, forcing his centre of balance askew.

Her breath caught in her throat. He wouldn't … would he?

"Sassafras." She swallowed. "Speedy, come down."

"Why does is it always you who tells me to do stuff I don't wanna do during a crisis?" He didn't look at her. With his mask on his eyes could be anywhere, but he faced out across the bay. Sunrise dyed the sky dark purple, freckled with lemon-coloured clouds. Only a curl of smoke from an oil tanker spoiled the picture postcard scene.

"Luck?"

He snorted. "Lady Luck keeps taking a dump on my head."

Bumblebee winced. "Ew."

"I told you to fuck off."

"I'm terrible at taking orders."

"Take them now, Bumblebitch. Or take advice. Whatever saviour complex you have going on, this isn't the time to try it on me. Just leave me alone."

She took a couple of steps towards him. He still didn't turn around. "I can't do that. See, somewhere along the way since we built this team, I developed a problem with watching you die."

"I'm not going to jump."

"Falling's real close to jumping. Come down, Speedy." She took another few steps and held out her hand.

His hands were already in fists, but it was his elbows, trembling with the effort of keeping his arms by his sides, which caught her attention. "Bumblebitch, I'm not kidding. Just go away."

"I will if you come down from there first. Maybe you're not gonna jump, but I'd feel a whole lot better if you were planted on this side of the wall where -"

"Just leave me alone!"

Bumblebee stopped where she was, hand still outstretched. "Speedy," she said, softly in response to the agony in his voice. Apart from anger and frustration, it was more emotion than she'd heard from him in a long time. "I want to help you -"

"Don't you get it yet? You _can't_ help! You never could! You keep sticking your nose in, looking to find the weak spot in the poor little broken boy, but there isn't one, and no amount of looking is gonna produce it. But you can't – or _won't_ – let up. You can't let me be. You just keep poking and prodding without any thought of how I feel about it because _you _need me to be damaged so you can play hero and 'save' me, or some other shit. You're so convinced I need fixing you're trying to break me all over again so you can feel better about yourself!"

Bumblebee froze. She knew he was talking like this because he was angry and upset, but the words still stung. "I never -"

"Maybe I just wanted to forget about everything that happened. Maybe every time you brought it up you were doing more harm than good. Ever think of that, huh? Did you?"

"I just did what I thought was right -"

"Well it wasn't! Not for me. Maybe for you. You have such a guilt complex going on because you used to work for Brother Blood, you're always trying to make up for the stuff you did back then and you blame yourself for everything that goes wrong. When are you going to learn that sometimes bad stuff happens and _nobody_ can do anything about it? You're not personally responsible for the world's problems. So you were a bad guy. Boo hoo. You're not now and you can't travel through time to change what's done, so _get over it_. When are you _finally_ going to catch on that you can't fix everything completely? Not Steel City, not the stuff you did in the past, and _not __**me**_!"

What he said hit a nerve, triggering a memory Bumblebee couldn't quite place in context – her mother in a striped apron, hands covered in flour and a smear of icing sugar on her cheek. She used to work so hard to support them, but on her rare days off of she'd always make time for baking with her daughter. There was satisfaction in the simple task of mixing ingredients in a bowl and watching delicious things grow from them in the oven. Some people got the same feeling from planting seeds, but Melody Beecher preferred cuddling her little Karen while they burned their tongues on hot cookies.

_You can't travel through time to change what's done, so get over it. When are you finally going to catch on that you can't fix everything completely?_

She couldn't save Momma. She couldn't save her friends at HIVE Academy, either. By the time she finally broke free of Blood's mind control they'd either 'left school' because they couldn't cut it, or were so embedded in Blood's world there was no way of breaking them free. Even after Blood was gone, they were villains through and through, his poison rotting them from the inside out. Kids she'd played with, whose houses she'd slept over at would just as easily tear out her throat if it meant achieving their goals. When HIVE collapsed they sped off into the world to make their own ways as criminals and bad guys. There was no turning back, no saving them. She couldn't save all the people Titans East couldn't get to in time every night, or those victims of the invisible crimes nobody ever reported. The people she could save were so few in comparison to those she couldn't.

Suddenly it was too warm, even though a salty breeze blew in off the ocean. Bumblebee felt her breath hitching in her chest; a vein pulsed in her temple; her heart beat too loud inside her head. She hadn't thought about her old pals in a long time – not consciously, at least. She never thought about Momma, either, because thinking about Momma made her think about that last night in Chicory, when Blood first dug in his claws and forced her to betray the person most important to her in the world. So many times since then she'd wished Momma had survived the fire, and that Bumblebee was still just Karen Beecher, small-town-girl whose only mission was to pass algebra and bully her mother into making cookies.

"I don't care."

"What?" said Speedy.

"I don't care," Bumblebee gritted. "Call me an idiot if you like. Insult me. Tell me I'm stupid. I don't care. Maybe I do feel guilty about dumb stuff I can't control, and maybe I do try to fix stuff that's pretty hopeless, but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop trying. If I stopped trying I'd be as bad as the ones who committed the crimes in the first place. I won't ever turn my back when I see people hurting, and even if they knock me back a thousand times, I'll just keep on coming, because at least if they're venting at me they're not bottling it all up inside where it'll only hurt themselves."

"You still don't get it."

"So tell me. Make me understand. Come down from there and talk to me."

"Stop telling me what to do!" With a roar, Speedy whirled and leapt off the wall.

If she'd had full control of her wings she would've blurred away, but she just stood there as he barrelled into her and knocked her off her feet. They went sprawling across the Tower's flat roof. Her bare arms scraped against the concrete and something sharp scored across her lower back. She went with the roll, protecting her neck and head, and coming up on one knee. From there it was easy to rise onto the balls of her feet in a much more secure stance.

The punch wasn't entirely unexpected. She sidestepped, glad she'd kept up with her training, and fired off one of her own. It missed too, but it was kind if meant to. Connecting right now would be like clubbing a baby seal with a plutonium rod.

Speedy launched a wild kick that would have gotten him killed in a real fight. Bumblebee avoided it easily and circled around to place herself between him and the rooftop's edge.

"You're not thinking clearly," she tried, a rasp in her voice.

"Stop it! Stop _telling _me what I'm thinking. I don't need some stupid _girl_ dictating my life to me."

"I'm not dictating," she tried, but he wasn't listening.

Speedy must have been exhausted after his patrol, yet he seemed to vibrate, almost humming with energy like a high-tension wire. His voice shook with something close to hysteria, which was totally unlike his usual monochrome behaviour. "I won't be dictated to. I won't let you order me around anymore, like what I think doesn't matter. You don't care about me. You just want me to fit into your plans – you just _need_ me in order to accomplish your own plans. I could be anyone. Everybody already says I'm Robin's ginger twin, so why not get him to take my place? Why me, huh? Why are you acting out your psychosis on _me_?"

"Speedy!"

"You're as bad as Blood when he was in my head, telling me what to do, how to act, what to _feel_."

Bumblebee felt like she'd been stabbed through the back of her ribcage with an icicle. Though she'd been on her guard the significance of that accusation caused her to pause in stunned disbelief.

Speedy moved. With a single, fluid motion, so fast Bumblebee barely had time to react, he stepped into the space between them and lashed out with a savage backhand. The blow struck Bumblebee's cheek hard and she went down, rolling awkwardly with the blow. One of her wings bent double beneath her and they were still so tender she cried out in pain. Usually she would've leapt to her feet after a strike like that, but the molten pain stole her strength for a second. The next thing she knew Speedy was standing over her, one fist bunched in her neckline, the other raised to strike her again.

"Roy, no!" She shut her eyes and wondered if she could kick upwards faster than he could punch downwards.

Except the punch never came.

Bumblebee unsqueezed her eyes. Her cheek felt inflamed and she could taste blood, but she scarcely noticed as she stared up into Speedy's face. It was contorted into a strange expression she couldn't begin to put a name to. He still had his arm raised, but his fist had loosened and his breathing was shallow.

"You're not Cheshire," he said, as if reminding himself of this fact. He let go of her top and staggered backwards like he was the one who'd been struck. "You're not … oh God," he finished in a whisper. "I'm going to be a dad. That … _girl_ is carrying my baby…"

Bumblebee scrambled to her knees, ignoring the jolt of pain from her wings as she saw Speedy sag, catching him before he could fall. "I've got you," she said.

The sob came out all at once, devastated, the sound of someone finally at the end of their tether. It didn't even sound like crying. His mouth opened and a disturbingly primal _noise_ came out. It sounded like the wail of a trapped and wounded animal that had tried to chew off its own leg to escape, only to find the hunter had been in the shadows all along with a readied shotgun.

Bumblebee held him, tears prickling the corners of her own eyes as his grief shuddering through her body. "I've got you," she repeated, like it was the only thing she had left to say. "I've got you."

* * *

"_Your hair…"_

_Speedy, cross-legged in the window seat, budged at the exclamation as much as he had at their entrance – not one inch. While the lotus position usually denoted calm, what Speedy radiated was complete disconnection from his surroundings – including them. Considering his famous vanity, maybe it was his way of dealing with his current appearance; or maybe he just liked ignoring them._

_It was Aqualad who had spoken, though the words also balanced like a Russian gymnast on the tip of Bumblebee's tongue. _

"_It's … it's …" Aqualad fought to claw back what could have been mistaken as an insult instead of just surprise. "It's …"_

"_It's a different look for you," Bumblebee rescued. _

"_Yeah. I hear the cancer patient look is really in right now." Speedy finally swivelled his head to look at them. He was wearing his mask, of course, only increasing his head's similarity to a billiard ball. He was like an eight-ball with its colours reversed. "They shaved it so they had easier access to my scalp."_

"_Oh-"_

"_And the bone underneath. My skull thinks it's a revolving door after being in this place." _

"_You … you really can't tell-"_

"_Only because I have to wear a skin-tight cover when they're not working on me." Like it was the most normal thing in the world, Speedy peeled back the 'skin' behind one ear. Underneath he was a mass of angry red and what looked like thin, pulsing slugs that clung to his skull like barnacles on a ship. _

_Bumblebee felt sick. Aqualad looked a little green about the gills, too, and for once it wasn't a cliché. She was glad they'd decided to come in first, before Mas or Menos. Damn, but sometimes she felt like she and Aqualad were the replacements for the parents those two left in Mexico. She wasn't sure where Speedy fell in that arrangement – a favourite uncle, perhaps, or some cousin who rattled all the boxes under the Christmas tree and hid the Easter Egg Hunt chocolate in the compost heap. _

_Speedy snapped the skin back into place. Bumblebee could've sworn a satisfied expression made a brief appearance. "You can go home now."_

_Belligerence rose inside her like a column of fire. With a flick of her wrist she spun a chair out from under the table of the STAR Labs Visitors' Room and plonked herself in it. "We're staying," she said firmly – far more firmly than she actually felt. Aqualad followed her lead and they waited for Speedy to make the next move. _

_He glared at the wall for a long moment – so long that Bumblebee half expected him to throw them out via the helping hands of the facility's guards. Well, they were technically porters, but she'd seen pro wrestlers with fewer muscles and more intellect. She couldn't tell what emotions were going on in Speedy's head. Maybe he really did want them to leave. Maybe he only thought he did. Maybe what he actually needed was to be reminded there were those who would stick by him no matter what – including no matter how badly he treated them out of his own pain._

"_If you must," he eventually muttered, turning his head away so she could no longer read his expression. _

* * *

From the day she finally threw off Brother Blood's influence, Bumblebee swore she'd never be controlled again. That translated to ensuring she was always the one in control of her own destiny. She would always make her own choices and decide for herself where and who she wanted to be. She once told Cyborg there wasn't a man alive who could tell her what to do, and she meant it.

She couldn't be Karen Beecher anymore; Blood had stolen that identity and tainted it, turning it into something with a bitter aftertaste. Karen Beecher left her own mother to burn to death; Karen Beecher allowed herself to be taken in and brainwashed by a madman; Karen Beecher was just a foolish little kid with no knowledge of how the world really worked. Bumblebee, on the other hand …

Bumblebee had done bad things, but Bumblebee had powers. Bumblebee was stronger and kick-ass. Bumblebee could change what she was into something good. Bumblebee wouldn't let herself be controlled again.

When Blood broke into East Tower and reclaimed his hold on her and the rest of Titans East, she spent the whole time screaming inside her head.

When she was made leader of Titans East it played right into her hands – nobody could tell her what to do if she was the one doing the telling. She was overprotective of her team, not wanting anything like that to happen to them again. They had experienced a day of Blood's mind control, but she'd suffered years under his thumb. As much as she was hung up on proving she wasn't a villain anymore, driving herself above and beyond what other Titans did to achieve this, she also wanted to protect those she was responsible for. She _needed_ to keep her friends safe just to keep herself sane.

Unfortunately, over time, she became such a domineering personality that others sometimes had to pull her back. She let them because she never wanted to become like Brother Blood and was all too aware that if she went too far down this path that was where she'd end up – dictating from on high.

Then Cheshire kidnapped Speedy and Bumblebee's world slewed unexpectedly sideways. Suddenly all her hard work had come to nothing – her teammate had been hurt more than she could heal, and no amount of quality leadership was going to put that right. Suddenly she didn't know what to do, just as she hadn't when she let Brother Blood take her and her friends from Chicory. With one strike Cheshire wrecked both Speedy's world and Bumblebee's.

Bumblebee needed control. Speedy could no longer take being controlled. Bumblebee lived to be leader. Speedy bucked against being led. Without consciously realising it, Bumblebee's attempts to direct him brought back Cheshire's concentrated success at doing so, the way the smell of rotten egg brings back bile.

It was inevitable they would eventually come to blows over it. What followed, however, was far more painful than the beatings either had taken from their tormentors.

She could feel his breath against her neck. Her arms were cramped from holding him tight, but she wouldn't let him go. She had the ridiculous idea that if she did, he might literally fall apart in front of her. The spring of apprehension inside her tightened into alarm as he pushed the flat of one hand against her, levering himself away.

"I guess I'm not as okay as I made out."

His honesty floored her. After months of denial here he was, snotty-nosed and actually admitting she'd been right. The words hung in the air like the echo from the chime of a church bell. This was too real, too distressing, too dangerous. Bumblebee's heart punched her ribcage.

"I guess not," she said.

"Aren't you going to say 'I told you so'?"

"Don't be an ass."

Speedy laughed mirthlessly. "I thought that was my role in this team. You're the leader, Aqualad's the serious, unattainable and slightly creepy one, Mas y Menos are comic relief and I'm the attractive-but-arrogant asshole. See? We all fit."

"Speedy -"

He rubbed his wrist against his eyes and made a frustrated noise. "Fucking tears. No wonder you never cry. Can't see a fucking thing – argh!" In a movement like ripping off a band-aid, he dug the fingers of his left hand around the edge of the mask and tore it off.

The glue should have been dissolved using a specialised solution first, so the mask took a few layers of skin with it, leaving a red outline across his forehead, temples and cheeks. Blood leaked from below his left eye and dribbled into his newly-freed tears, turning them a terrible pink, like raw meat on a butcher's slab.

Bumblebee swallowed. The last time she saw him without his mask was in hospital right after Cheshire. This time, however, he didn't cover his face and yell for a fresh mask. Instead he kept his eyes squeezed shut like the dying light might blind him. His hair was scruffy, he smelled like a sewer, and he was about as far from his pin-up boy image as he could be.

And yet …

And yet there was something intensely vulnerable about him. He looked far more defenceless than he had tied to Cheshire's chair, or when she and Aqualad saw him bald and white-pyjama-ed in STAR Labs recuperation unit.

Bumblebee swallowed hard. Her voice came out rough and scratchy, like she'd breathed in sawdust. "You look like shit."

"Thanks." He still didn't unsqueeze his eyes. "You're really bad at talking people down from hysteria."

"I know." Oh boy, did she know. She swallowed again. "I'm no uglier with the mask off, you know."

"I know that, I just … if I open my eyes and see you sitting there looking at me like I'm some baby bird who fell out its nest, it'll make everything real. If I keep my eyes shut, you're not really there because I can't see you, and I can pretend I never made such a fool of myself just now. Which sounds exactly like all that touchy-feely psychobabble I hate, so I'm gonna pretend I didn't say that either."

"I guess I'm good at bringing out the parts of you that you don't like to acknowledge."

Slowly, he opened one eye. Bumblebee kept her expression carefully neutral, though she wasn't sure what a poor-little-baby-bird look _was._

"There it is."

She bristled only slightly. "There what is?"

"That look."

"For crying out loud, what look?"

"Forget it." He opened his other eye, blinking a little. His pupils dilated and shrank again as light assaulted them. For a moment they just stared into each other's eyes, as if assessing who was going to bolt first. Then he heaved such a huge sigh the tide went out three inches. "I'm not okay."

Bumblebee shook her head, not taking her gaze off him. "No."

"I haven't been okay for a long time. I thought I could just, y'know, sit on everything. Pretend it never happened, or that it didn't bother me. I was getting really good at it. The nightmares weren't so often, or so bad. I was back in the field. I could take care of people again – make a difference, _be _somebody. I wasn't at the top of my game, but I was close. Except …" His throat bobbed convulsively. "Except …"

Too real, too distressing, too dangerous…

Bumblebee was aware Aqualad might burst out here at any moment. He'd been just as worried and frantic as her about finding Speedy, and he deserved to know he was okay, but at the same time … she didn't want him to. She didn't want anyone to interrupt this moment of perfect, ghastly clarity. Months of emotional detritus was surfacing, a backlog of repressed emotions clogging the way as they tried to emerge. It was worse than pulling teeth – it was like pulling tiny bone fragments from a reopened, festering wound.

"Except … if I was okay, I wouldn't have tried to kill Johnny Rancid. I wouldn't have hurt you…"

She'd suspected about Rancid. It was still terrible to hear it confirmed. She didn't know the best thing to do. She didn't know the _first_ thing to do.

Speedy's voice was choked, as well it might be. It was barely a voice she could recognise as his, which was more than a little terrifying. Had she really wanted this? Whenever she said she wanted him to open up, to talk about things so he could heal properly, was this what she'd intended? She'd barely even realised how much of an impact it would have on _her_, too.

"I'm going to be a father. I'm going to … there's going to be a kid in the world, who I made. How the hell … what am I … I can't … I'm not even sure how to be _me_ anymore."

"Oh, Sassa– Speedy-"

"I've been trying and trying, just plugging away and not thinking about what might happen if I couldn't get back to normal. You kept trying to stop me, to break me out of my pattern, but you didn't understand how much I needed that pattern to feel _human. _It wasn't about my hand, or the cybernetics. I didn't need it the way Cyborg needs to feel human. I just needed to just be the old Speedy again. The Speedy who Green Arrow trained, the Speedy who Robin personally requested to be in Titans East, The Speedy who wasn't such a weak-ass idiot – who didn't let things like that, like _Cheshire_, happen to him."

"It wasn't your fault-"

"I _know_ that. Or at least part of me does, but knowing it and _knowing_ it are two different things. Y'know?"

And Bumblebee did know. She hadn't been violated physically, but Brother Blood took away everything that made her who she was the night he compelled her to betray her mother and work for him. He'd desecrated her mind with his mental controlling, leaving her with ticks and scars that were no less potent for not being visible. She'd done such terrible things, and the fact she did them because he forced her didn't make her feel any less responsible. It was why she tried so hard to be a good Teen Titan, to take care of her team and her responsibilities. Even when she wasn't acknowledging it, some part of her was constantly aware she was trying to make up for her past.

"I do know," she said softly.

Speedy looked at her, right _at_ her. His eyes were panic-stricken, but his voice was weirdly eager, like he wanted her to correct him. "No you don't."

"Maybe not the way you do, but I do know."

She thought maybe he was going to explode again, but he just stared at her for a long time.

His eyes were green, she noticed then, wondering why she hadn't before. Not green like Cheshire's, but a bright green, like coloured glass. They weren't emerald, nor a startling jade. Romance novelists would find it difficult to locate appropriate adjectives because they were just … a very _green _sort of green, the way new shoots poking through a snow drift seem greener than those in soil already full of flowers.

"I can't be just another victim," he whispered. "I'm Speedy. I'm a Teen Titan. I'm more than that."

Bumblebee nodded. "You are! Nobody's ever _just_ a victim. That's just a label, not a whole person. You're still Speedy. You're still _Roy_."

He looked away then, breaking eye-contact and making her feel strangely deflated. Damn. Wrong thing to say. She scoured her brain for something better.

"You're …" Think. _Think!_ "You're still Sassafras?" It came out like a question.

She was about to say more when she saw him blinking rapidly. Her mouth snapped shut.

"I…" Speedy stopped. His fists tightened and his breathing accelerated into tiny but shallow breaths, like a mouse on the verge of a heart attack after being cornered by a cat. "I was …" A deep breath then. For strength? Reassurance? Oxygenation? "I was … raped."

The world shattered a little with that admission. Just a little, at the corners, but the cracks in the middle had been growing for a while anyway. Perhaps now she could tape everything up, like windows taped to protect against bomb blowback during World War II. Taped windows would shatter, but never break or fall to pieces. The frame was never bare of glass.

Nobody had ever used the word before.

"Oh, Speedy…" Bumblebee murmured.

"No. I think … I think I have to be just Roy for a while. I think I … I think I need to take some time off. A sabbatical or something. I need to … to figure things out. Figure myself out. This is all too big for me to handle on my own. I've been hurting myself trying to just go back to normal like it never happened." He chuckled – actually _chuckled_. "I guess you finally got your way. I'm finally obeying your orders."

"You know this wasn't what I wanted."

He still refused to look at her. "Yeah. I guess so."

They were too close for comfort. It was a sudden bit of awareness that made Bumblebee flutter her wings, wince, and tense her legs to get up. Yet Speedy made no such movement and it felt too much like abandoning him to do anything but stay, despite the discomfort. Personal space and all that jazz.

So they sat.

And sat.

It felt like a test she hadn't studied for.

Eventually Speedy said, "I'm going to go away for a while."

"Okay."

"It's not running away," he added quickly, _defensively_. "I thought about this a couple of times before, when you brought up the idea of enforced retirement. The thing is, I don't wanna retire completely. I like this life. I like making a difference the way we do. But for a little while, at least, maybe it's a good idea I'm not in it. I can't be trusted."

Bumblebee wanted to disagree, but honesty had her in a chokehold and was waiting for the bell. "I said it's okay. How many times do we have to say we only want what's best for you before you get it through that thick head of yours? We. Care. About. You. If what you need is time away from being a Titan, then so be it. Nobody here will stand in your way. Likewise nobody would stand in your way if and when you wanted to come back, too."

"What happened to benching me for good?"

"You're not the only one who's been doing a lot of thinking lately."

* * *

_It took weeks to get through the door to where Cheshire was being kept. Not because the guards prevented him, but because the pattern he'd fallen into let him look, approach, scout around and find the weak spots of the building, but never go in. _

_The day after Bumblebee woke up in hospital Speedy ignored the pattern and marched straight through the front entrance. Johnny Rancid and the feel of phantom rain compelled him to prove to himself that Cheshire didn't control his life. He was past that, and the way to make sure was to go in, look her in the face, and not feel a thing except the same contempt he felt for all unrepentant criminals. _

_At least, that was the plan before security mentioned he was the second Titan from Steel to visit Cheshire alone. Speedy checked the visitor record, confirming his suspicions that Bumblebee had, once again, stuck her nose into his business. The date said she visited Cheshire while he was still recovering in hospital, and there was some irony in their currently reversed roles that he failed to appreciate as anger bubbled inside him._

_Bumblebee was always trying to control the situation. What she failed to realise was that this wasn't her situation to control. If he'd stopped to think about it, maybe he would've remembered that Cheshire was an enemy to all the Titans and that, as leader, Bumblebee had an obligation to investigate her movements. Maybe he would've thought that Bumblebee had proven Cheshire was just an ordinary human now – contained by walls, red tape and visiting hours like any other felon. By going to see Cheshire now he could gain control over what she'd done to him – face her in an environment where she had less control than anyone. He needed that. He needed to reassert himself as master of his own fate. If he'd gone in then, maybe it would have done what months of __**not**__ seeing her had failed to do_

_Instead, by going in first Bumblebee gave Speedy an excuse to run away again and pretend he was just defending his territory. _

_He left without seeing Cheshire, heading straight for the hospital where Bumblebee was being taken for an outing in her wheelchair. _

* * *

"We'll wait for you," Bumblebee said resolutely.

"You can't work without a full rota. We can barely manage patrolling Steel City as it is. Without me, you'll be one short." Speedy shook his head. "You should recruit a replacement."

"Fine, but only a temporary one. And I'll be sure to let them know the job only lasts as long as you need it to. If you decide you don't want to come back, fine, but the moment you want to come back to Titans East you just say the word. Got it?"

"You really think anyone would want a job with conditions like that?"

Bumblebee waved a hand. "We'll figure something out. You just concentrate on yourself."

"Hmf. I've been doing a lot of that, these past few months." Speedy rubbed his eyes. "I'm sorry."

"What the heck for?"

"For not letting you in. I made my peace with Aqualad and Mas y Menos – even Robin. But you … I was an asshole."

"I thought you said that was your role." Her fists and stomach clenched. "It's so weird. All this time I've been trying to get you to open up to me, and now you are I have no idea what to do next, except promise not to smother or control you anymore. I guess I really messed up, huh?"

"Excuse me?"

"Suffocating you. Trying to fix you. If I'd just let up, maybe you would've done naturally what I was trying to force. I was just so _impatient_, and I didn't even realise the damage I was doing."

"I had my head up my own ass. Quit blaming yourself."

"Shut up. I'm trying to be magnanimous."

"Trying to be what?"

"Magnanimous. Noble. _Fair_."

"Nothing about this has been fair." Speedy's voice caught on the word. He cleared his throat several more times than was needed. "I hate touchy feely crap. I hate conversations where I have to 'open up'. And I hate _this_. All of this. I've never hated anything in the world as much as I hate having to wake up each day knowing how badly I screwed up and how badly it screwed _me_ up."

"You didn't screw up-" Bumblebee began hotly.

"Don't even try to argue with me, Bumblebee."

"But you _didn't_-"

"I nearly killed someone!" Suddenly he jumped up, mood snapping backwards so fast Bumblebee was sure she risked whiplash. His eyes flashed and his hands gesticulated wildly. "You don't get it, do you? I fucked up. I nearly fucked up completely, and all because I'm too stupid to grasp how messed up my own head is. I'm a walking time-bomb. All the signs were there, people tried to warn me and I still didn't listen. I was too wrapped up in pretending. I couldn't even say the word – I couldn't _say_ what happened to me. I couldn't … Heroes don't kill people! They don't get that close!"

"You didn't kill Johnny Rancid." Bumblebee also got to her feet.

"Because I was stopped! I _wanted _him dead. All I could think about was hurting him, just like hurting _you_ a minute ago -"

"You're nothing like Cheshire!" The words were out before she could stop them.

Speedy looked shocked. He blinked rapidly, as though a light had been rudely switched on after his eyes were used to the dark. His throat bobbed convulsively and he stared at her so hard she expected her forehead to start burning like an insect being fried under a magnifying glass.

Bumblebee stared right back at him. "You're not," she said in a voice like a tiny scrap of concrete.

Speedy's expression swung between angry and lost, but both were pathetic in a way she'd only scratched the surface of before. The tangle of raw emotions boiled and gurgled inside him, oozing free in dribs and drabs like poison seeping from an incision – an incision that slowly widened each time the right words prodded it.

She was so crap at this – the listening ear, the soft words, the comforting way to make a teammate feel better. Throughout her career as a Teen Titan, Bumblebee had envied the skills of other Titan girls – Starfire's gentleness, Raven's awkward but heartfelt compassion, Pantha's brazen honesty – and more than once wished she had the same skill to draw others out of themselves. The right word from one of them could pry a hurting teammate into the light and make them grateful to be there, but no matter how hard she tried Bumblebee never got it _quite _right. Mostly Titans East had gotten used to her ham-fisted attempts to lift their moods when they were down, just as they'd gotten used to the way she pushed herself too far and too fast. She had learned from her mistakes, but she was too critical, too logical, too pushy to really play the part well. She wanted more than she was capable of giving and wanted others to respond like they would to a defter hand.

That didn't mean she'd ever stop trying, of course.

"Yes, you've made some mistakes, but so does everybody. You've been through a traumatic experience. You can't expect to be firing on all cylinders after that. But you _don't_ have to feel guilty, or embarrassed or … or _ashamed_! Because everything you've said to me, since the night we found you in that apartment; everything you've done to push us away – to push _me_ away – it's like you're ashamed of what happened to you. It happened _to_ you. You didn't ask for it. You didn't cause it to happen. It was totally random and unfortunate and the result of a sick mind with too much power. You can't blame yourself for that. You can't blame yourself for what it's done to you."

"I'm never going to be able to forget it," Speedy said.

"Don't say things like that!"

"No, I mean I will never, ever be physically able to forget any part of this."

"What?"

"Cheshire's going to have a baby – _my_ baby. That baby is going to be a constant reminder. I never really considered being a father before, but I never thought I'd want to hate my own kid."

"So don't hate it. That baby could be your ticket back to reality. It could be how you heal – getting someone to love instead of only … Cheshire – someone to hate. If Titans East can't help you, and Green Arrow can't help you, and Robin can't help you, maybe this child _can_." She was shouting right up into his face, trying to get her message through. "You don't have to come out of this with only a head full of regrets and hatred. You could get something better than catharsis. You could get something amazing! Your child. Not just Cheshire's – _yours._"

Speedy looked away. "I … didn't think about it like that."

"Don't beat yourself up anymore."

"Humph."

"Sassafras, _please_."

"Heh."

"Excuse me?"

"Sassafras." He slid his eyes to her. "And you said please. You never say please."

Bumblebee wasn't sure how that was important, but apparently it was. To him, at least. And that was what really mattered right now, wasn't it?

"Promise me you won't do this to yourself."

"I can't promise anything. Not anymore."

"Bull! You're still you, and if there's one thing I know about you, you're awkward as hell and twice as dedicated. So dedicate yourself to this: to _not_ beating yourself up, or blaming yourself, or thinking you were in any way responsible for the situation you're in. Or that you have to get out of it alone."

"I'm damaged goods." His voice had the unmistakable huskiness that happened when someone was telling a truth they didn't want to tell. "You can't count on me to be the me you think you know."

"I'm not asking you to be someone you're not; I'm just asking you not to turn into someone like … like me!"

"The hell?" He stared at her, uncomprehending.

Crap.

Instead of answering, Bumblebee fumbled for her communicator and turned away from him to tap the keys. She ducked her head so he couldn't see her brief irrational panic, shoving it away under a blanket of practicality. "Aqualad? I found him. He's okay."

"How okay is okay?" came the tinny response.

"It's enough. I'll explain … later." She would. She promised herself as well as him. "You can stop worrying now."

"Yeah right."

"Bumblebee," said Speedy from behind her.

"Are Mas y Menos there?" Bumblebee ignored him.

"Bumblebee."

"No," Aqualad replied tightly. "They're making rock cakes."

"Rock cakes?"

"It was the easiest thing to keep them occupied."

"Bumblebee!" Speedy reached around to grab for her communicator, but she held it away from him, glaring.

"I'll speak to you in a minute," she told Aqualad. "Bumblebee out." She snapped the communicator shut, tucked it back into place and worked up the bravado to look fiercely at Speedy without letting him know how rattled she was. On top of learning about Cheshire, on top of seeing him break down and rocket from one emotion to another in a tiny timeframe, she could not cope with talking about Chicory and her mother. "Leave it. I never meant to say that."

"Obviously you did. Obviously you thought it was relevant, and obviously you were talking about more than just Brother Blood and working for HIVE. I may not be the brains of the outfit, but I'm not stupid. There was more in your face than just your tired old vendetta against Blood."

"I'm not the one we're talking about here. You are. You've been avoiding this conversation for months, and now you've finally opened up I'm not letting you turn the table back on me so fast."

"Hypocrite." He narrowed his eyes at her.

Anger boiled inside her. "You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Fine. This just makes me glad I won't be seeing your hypocrite face for a while – if ever again. I thought you were just some controlling perfectionist with a grudge, but a good heart. Now I realise you're the biggest hypocrite of them all. How the hell do you expect me to trust you with any confidences if you can't do the same. I bared my fucking soul up here tonight. I made a complete idiot of myself, told you stuff you've been digging around for in me for months. You made me feel like a lab rat as I scurried about in the Tower, and just when I think you were maybe right, you do your usual trick of slamming the door in my face and keeping everybody out. Why is _your_ privacy so much more important than mine? If I'm not supposed to turn into 'someone like you', why can't you tell me what that 'someone' is?"

"Because … because it's complicated."

"Bullshit. Life is complicated. That's no excuse."

"We're not talking about m-"

"Yes we are. We're talking about you, and we're talking about me, and if you don't start making some fucking sense I'm going to walk away from this team and never look back. I've had it, Bumblebee. I've had it up to here," Speedy raise a hand and held it level with his temple, "with your condescending attitude, with how you think you always know best."

"I don't always know best, but this is-"

"More of that stupid campaign you have going against Brother Blood? It's always been bigger with him, hasn't it? Even the Brotherhood of Evil didn't faze you as much as Blood did. The guy was a manipulative scumbag, but he was taken down, and it's been as boring as hell hearing you talk about him ever since. 'We have to do this, we don't want another Brother Blood on our hands'. 'I can't let up, he might still be out there somewhere'. 'Oh, he made me do such terrible things, like leave faucets running, not turning off the lights to save energy, and going into rooms without knocking or wiping my feet'. 'Brother Blood was the evillest, meanest, steal-candy-off-a-baby-est bad guy in the entire freaking universe – even worse than Cheshire, the girl who _tortured_ and _raped_ you, because he made us fight each other and we're friends so we must never ever fight or Santa won't bring us gifts at Christmas'-"

"My mother died because of him!"

The shout was more of a shriek, peeled off the walls of her lungs like skin off a sausage, revealing the ugly pink insides underneath. The silence that followed was punctuated only by the faint sizzle of Bumblebee's scowl as it burned a hole through Speedy's retinas.

"I'm sorry," he started, but she cut him off.

"No, you wanted to hear it, so you can damn well hear it. Chicory, the town I grew up in? Full of mutant kids. Brother Blood got wind of us and decided, hey, I need some pupils for my brand new school, so he set fire to the town, killed all our families and telepathically directed us to safety so he could ride in like some knight in shining armour and offer us some bull about a new, safer home. Without our folks we had no place else to go, and not one of us was strong enough to fight his mind control, so we went with him. I left my mother to _die_ because _he_ told me to. I watched my friends be twisted by his mind control. I couldn't stop _myself_ from hurting people – torturing them like Cheshire tortured you. You want to know why I've been so caught up in helping you get better? Because you're my friend, and because if I hadn't escaped Blood when I did, I could have been the one in her cell today. And you wonder why I hate the guy so much?" She was breathing hard, like she been running. "Because he controlled me. Because he made me feel like a victim. You know what that feels like, don't you Roy?" She didn't sneer it. She was too close to tears to sneer.

Damn it. Speedy always knew how to push her buttons.

Speedy seemed genuinely remorseful. He looked like a snake that had swallowed a mouse, only to discover it was actually a cow when it got stuck in his throat. "I'm sorry, I never knew-"

"No, you never knew. Nobody ever knew. The funny thing is, it's not something I'm especially proud of so I don't talk about it much. But now you do know, and you can guess why I don't want this thing with Cheshire to rot you away inside because you feel like it was somehow your fault. Like you could've – should've – done something, even though you know there was no way … no way …" Damn. She clenched her fists and turned away so she wouldn't punch his lights out. You weren't supposed to punch emotionally unstable people. "We're talking about you," she gritted. "You're going to be a father, a-and you need to decide what you're going to d-do about that, as well as what you're g-gonna do next to heal yourself-"

"Karen."

She froze.

The last time he called her that was on the bridge in the rain.

They only used their civilian names when things were really serious.

"What?"

"I'm sorry."

"This isn't about me."

"It isn't about me, either."

She swallowed. "Then who is it about? The Tooth Fairy?"

"Can you at least look at me?"

Her fists tightened. "Actually, I'm not sure if I can." A welter of strained emotions tumbled around inside her belly like a washing machine on final spin: guilt, shame, triumph, grief, regret … oh yes, lots of regret. Regret for leaving Momma, regret for working for HIVE, regret for not being the one to finally defeat Brother Blood, regret for not being a better Titan, a better leader, better equipped to keep her teammates safe.

And regret for blurting out the secrets that had slowly eaten away at her for years.

She felt Speedy move closer and folded her arms, making her tense shoulders into a line of barbed wire even he couldn't mistake. So he was actually being quite brave when he rested a hand on one and left it there. It was his flesh hand, which seemed suddenly significant in a way she couldn't identify.

"We are so messed up," he said softly.

Her shoulders didn't relax. They _didn't_. "Yeah."

It wasn't really clear who initiated the kiss. Afterwards, they'd blame each other but secretly blame themselves, because it was what they were good at. Either way, it wasn't as bad as it could've been. It wasn't sloppy or too dry, it wasn't too fierce – in fact it was more than a little hesitant. Remembering it later, Bumblebee wondered if it had really been a kiss at all, or merely the whispering touch of his lips against hers, like they'd each stumbled in such a way when he turned her towards him that they brushed against each other as they fell.

"I'm sorry." Speedy pulled away. "I-I can't. Not yet."

She just nodded. The fluster that had appeared with the kiss disappeared and was replaced with the seed of an ill-defined emotion that settled in the pit of her stomach and worked its way outward from there.

They weren't Love's Young Dream. They weren't the poster children for a healthy relationship. Maybe this was as far as it would ever go, but for that half-second in the sharp, salty breeze on the rooftop, with their souls mangled and bare on the floor and their stark confessions fresh in their minds, it was enough.

"I'll wait for you," she murmured, taking a step backwards. "Speedy. Roy. Sassafras."

And Speedy didn't say anything, just held her gaze for a moment and then went inside, leaving her to consider … everything.

She didn't come in from the cold for a long time. Aqualad brought up a blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders and sat next to her on the edge of the roof.

"He's gone," he said simply.

"Did he say where he was going?"

"Star City. Maybe he's gone to see Green Arrow."

"Maybe." She stared at the ocean. It shimmered in the pale blue-grey of pre-dawn. Speedy's decisions were his own, nobody else's. "How did he seem?"

"Purposeful," Aqualad said after a moment. "He wasn't wearing his mask." The word 'mask' turned up at the end like a corner of a dry sandwich, transforming the statement into a question.

"I know. I don't think he'll be needing it for a while." Bumblebee drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. "Masks suck."

"Uh, I suppose," Aqualad agreed.

"They really, really suck."

"Glad you and I never went in for them." Another dry-sandwich question, unpalatable and indigestible.

She agreed without hesitation. "You said it."

The sun was rising. It had been a bad night, but it would be a good day, she was certain. Difficult, sure, but good because the cracks weren't threatening to shatter everything anymore, and suddenly she felt like they had more options than they'd had in a long time. Herself, Aqualad, Mas, Menos, Speedy…

Speedy.

He would come back; she was convinced of that much. Not when, nor necessarily why, but he _would_ come back. She knew, just like she knew she'd be waiting for him, if not the why to that either. It was … complicated.

But then her relationship with him had always been complicated.

She could feel bits of herself opening up and coming out of hiding. Soon it would be tomorrow, and tomorrow would bring clean-up, triage, decisions nobody wanted to make. Tomorrow they'd have to carry on rounding up the escaped villains, grappling with authorities who refused to acknowledge their value, and just trying to keep everything together. She'd have to explain to Mas y Menos why Speedy had gone in a way they'd understand. Tomorrow might be anything, but right now was full of radiant colour as she and Aqualad watched the sunrise.

She leaned against him. He was noticeably surprised.

"Bumblebee? Are you going to tell me about-"

"Shh. I'd like to be Karen for a bit. Just until the sun finishes coming up."

He nodded like he understood, and maybe he did in part. However, Bumblebee stopped thinking about it – about anything except the brush of lips against her own and the increasing warmth of sunlight against her skin.

Maybe the future wasn't so bleak after all.

She hoped so.

* * *

_**Fin.**_

* * *

I know it's hard, but you found somehow  
To look into your heart 

_And to forgive me now.  
You've given me the strength to see  
Just where my journey ends.  
You've given me the strength  
To carry on. _

I see the path from this dark place.  
I see my future.  
Your forgiveness has set me free,  
Oh and I can see another way;  
I can face another day. 

-- from _No Way Out_ by Phil Collins.

* * *

**Side-flings, Homages and Downright Rip-offs**

"_**I can't do that. See, somewhere along the way since we built this team, I developed a problem with watching you die."**_

-- Side-fling to Mira Sorvino in _The Replacement Killers._

"_**I won't ever turn my back when I see people hurting."**_

-- Influenced by Katara's famous line "I won't ever turn my back on people who need me!" in _Avatar: The Last Airbender_.

_**She once told Cyborg there wasn't a man alive who could tell her what to do, and she meant it.**_

-- In the Season Three episode _Wavelength_.

_**He looked like a snake that had swallowed a mouse, only to discover it was actually a cow when it got stuck in his throat.**_

-- Boosted from a Stephanie Plum novel, though I can't remember which one.

**Well that's it. Thank you for sticking with me for the duration of this story. While enjoyment is maybe not the right word considering its subject matter, I hope you came away from this not cursing my name for stealing the portion of your life it took to read it. **

**If you would like to know what ultimately happens to this universe's Speedy and Bee several years in the future, try **_**The Ties That Bind**_

**I've put together a 'soundtrack' of sorts to go along with this fic, and with Speedy/Bumblebee in general, so people. It can be found at www . savefile . com / projects / 808533657**

_**REVIEWS APPRECIATED!**_

****

****

****

* * *


End file.
